The Choices We Make
by DyranHunter
Summary: When the Time Vortex saves Roses' life by regenerating her, she must leave her family and her 10.5 love to seek out the man who left her standing on a desolate beach in Norway with nothing but her memories not once but twice, or risk haveing her mind burn
1. The Choices That We Make

Disclaimer: This will be the only disclaimer in the story. I do not own Any of the Doctors incarnations. I DO NOT own Rose Tyler. I dream about owning them ^.^ but I don't :'(

_ Special Thanks to my Beta Stiehl_

**The Choices We Make - Chapter One**

_Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. - Henry A. Kissinger

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Her boots were making that satisfying clicking sound on the pavement that all new boots do. She knew it was silly to wear heeled boots out on recon with her Torchwood unit, but they weren't those ridiculous stiletto things, and they weren't very high, so Rose had decided to indulge herself just this once.

Catching the look on his face was enough to convince her it was worth it. The Doctor, the human one... John Smith, as he had chosen to be called, let his eyes skim over the skirt and black knee high boots with a look she'd never seen on the other Doctors face, and she grinned at him, as he opened his arms to hug her.

"You're working in that?" he murmured, kissing her gently.

"Nothing wrong with them, they're practical!" the blonde argued playfully, her grin still in place.

"That skirt's not..." he wrapped an arm round her waist and they entered the Torchwood building together. The scans, and fingerprint testing were routine to the pair of them by now. It had been a year since the original Doctor had left them on that desolate beach in Norway, and flown away without so much as a word goodbye, and in that time Rose and John had swiftly risen through the ranks of Torchwood until they were leading their own teams.

"You've got that new lad today, haven't you? Ian? Or Owen right?" a hand was passed through rough brown hair as he held a glass door open for her and Rose laughed.

"Mark... and yes, he started last week, but it's his first recon today... nothing too difficult, it seems to be a basic salvage mission," John sighed, and shoved his hands in his suit pockets. "Well, you know what I'm going to say; stay-"

"Stay safe, yes, I know," Rose glanced over her shoulder at the worried brown eyes watching her, and she grinned. "Love you..."

It still amazed her how those two simple words lit up his face, and lightened the weight he always seemed to carry around with him, and as he returned her grin with a sweet smile, Rose entered her meeting room with a warm glow settling into her chest.

* * *

Rose was cursing the skirt.

The look on John's face had been worth it, right up until the moment they reached the salvage site. She should have known that "crashed ship" would mean "uneven ground, lots of rubble... lots of climbing."

She sometimes wondered just how human John really was, besides only having one heart he'd lost the telepathic abilities of the Time Lords, but sometimes... just sometimes, he seemed to be able to know the best route to take, the best plan to follow, as though he was on some level aware of what was going to happen next.

As though he was still aware of the timelines.

Gunfire drew her attention and she crouched, rather uncomfortably, behind a chunk of rock.

"Tyler... bzzzz... shots to... bzzz... Thompson do... bzzz... copy?" her comm crackled.

Rose cursed, she knew sonic interference with the comm system when she heard it and didn't bother trying to respond. She leaned her head out slightly to try and locate who was shooting and staying low she managed to move further into the wreckage for a better view without drawing attention to herself.

Rose was carefully keeping her breathing steady, and was about to glance round her latest rock shield when something told her to stay still, to not move... and a shriek suddenly rent the air. She moved before her thoughts had caught up with her, swinging her arms over the top of the boulder she had crouched behind, her gun in her hands, and firing off shots in the direction the sound had come from. Red hair went flying, and the humanoid dropped the limp body of one of her team, pinning Rose with blood red eyes before shrieking again. Rose's blood froze, but she swiftly emptied her gun's clip into the chest of the Caxtarid, watching as it dropped, with the shock and adrenaline floating through her brain locking her muscles in place.

"C... casualty report?" she requested over the communications system, her voice soft, and one hand still on her gun.

"Thompson is down, badly injured, but we think he'll make it... Parker's dead." Rose let her eyes slip closed with a sigh.

"Let's move out, if there were more alive they would have attacked, the Caxtarids don't act alone if they can help it," she ordered, and slowly her team emerged from their covered positions.

"How does she know all of this?"

"She just does, that's Agent Tyler for you..." she caught the smattering of conversation over the comm and shook her head. If only they knew, they'd probably take _her_ in for experimentation.

The last four members of her team all met her at the crash site as she finished calling in a clean up crew. "There shouldn't be anything here we haven't encountered before... Mark, you stick by Evans and let her show you what sort of things need to be bagged and tagged, and what Torchwood considers junk... the rest of you, scatter formation, lets not overlook anything people... she was unusually violent."

After making sure that Evans was all right with teaching the new boy the ropes, Rose quickly joined her team in searching through the ship's debris. It appeared to be a small, one person shuttle, and Rose frowned as she leaned into the cockpit, her eyes studying the partially lit screens for something she could recognise.

"No... MARK NO...!" The blonde's blood ran cold, and all she caught sight of as she glanced over her shoulder was her team scattering, and the new guy's terrified face as they all watched what appeared to be a small hunk of metal soar towards the remains of the ship and bounce off of the front, setting off the self destruct sequence.

Rose managed to scramble out of the immediate vicinity of the shuttle, but didn't get nearly far enough, and she couldn't stop the sharp scream as she felt the flames lick along her side, and the shock wave sent her flying through the air.

Her last conscious thought was that if she hadn't been wearing that blasted skirt, she'd have been able to get up and run.

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The rattle of metal...

Shouting... "20 CC's of... we're **losing** her..."

"What did you think you were doing?"

"I... I'm sorry.…"

The smell of bleach.

The brightness of a hospital... The Torchwood facility.

Had they found out? Were they experimenting? Why did it hurt so much? Torchwood always sedated their alien test subjects...

"Where is she? You must let me see her!"

John?

"John..."

Her eyes opened slowly, blinking against the harsh light emanating from the ceiling, and carefully her eyes roved the room, finally landing on the desperate face of John Smith... Her Doctor. She blinked and he sighed, tears glittering in his expressive brown eyes, and her brow furrowed into a frown, pulling a wince of pain from her, which only hurt more.

He slipped his hand into hers, and stroked it gently, waiting for her to relax again.

"What happened?" Rose finally rasped, her throat drier than she'd expected. "How long have I been in here?"

"Only a day or so... they wanted to keep you asleep but..." John took a breath and glanced down at her hand. "It was that stupid fool Owen..."

"Mark..."

"...He threw a piece of debris over his shoulder after determining it useless... it was the control module for the ships main computer panel..." He watched her eyes widen in realisation, as her memories returned slowly while he spoke. "He blew up the ship, Daniel got a couple of scrapes but you... Rose..." The human time lord choked on her name, and the tears finally fell, causing Rose's own eyes to flood.

"I'm sorry... for wearing that... stupid skirt... she struggled to keep the tears held in check, certain that would hurt even more than she expected it too if the salty drops managed to run down her cheeks. The more she woke up the more she could feel the bandages.

"You're going to be fine," he muttered, and Rose's heart sank, and her smile vanished.

"Don't lie, John…"

"I'm not... I won't let them-"

"Not to yourself either... I can feel it... I'm in the intensive unit... Its bad-" She coughed from the force of her tone and then gasped as pain wracked her body. "Tell me the truth, John?" she begged, when she could finally draw a breath into her body again, and her partner fought off his own tears to continue speaking, although the tight grip he had on her hand never lessened.

"Your entire left side is covered... covered in acidic burns from the shuttle's engine fuel... you... you lost too much blood and the... burns... they aren't healing as fast or as well as they should... Rose... You... you're..."

"I'm dying…"

She locked eyes with John and studied the tears flooding his face, the helpless look in his eyes she'd only seen once before. The day his other version had left her in Norway for the first time.

When his words of devotion had been stolen from the both of them by the death of a sun.

"I won't let this happen... I'll find a way to fix this..."

"Doctor..." He fell silent, hurt flashing in his eyes for a moment, before he realised that this time... she meant _him._ "Doctor, you can't fix everything..."

"But it's not fair..."

"Life isn't..." the machines around her blipped, and stuttered for a minute, and Rose gasped, John Smith panicked... but after a moment, the equipment stabilized, and Rose opened her eyes again. "How long?"

Her lover was silent, and her eyes hardened, even through the pain she was feeling. "How long?" she demanded.

"Maybe a day... maybe less..." he whispered, as though he couldn't bear to speak their final deadline aloud and Rose nodded, shivering as pain ripped through her body once again at the thoughtless movement.

"I don't want to sleep..." she admitted, even as her eyes slid closed, and a fresh flood of tears made it's way down John's face.

"I'll be here when you wake up," he promised, gently brushing his fingers through what remained of her soft blonde hair.

* * *

John had fallen asleep at her side. More than once a Torchwood operative had come to make him leave, but a glare from the Oncoming Storm, and a few choice phrases growled at them, had each and every one scampering from the room as fast as they could while still retaining their dignity.

He slept lightly, fitfully, waking every ten or fifteen minutes to check on this amazing, wonderful, beautiful woman who had accepted him for who he was, differences and all, and deigned to love him with all her heart. But what woke him this time would have had both his hearts stopping and his second respiratory system shutting down if he still had those secondary organs inside of this part human body.

The machines Rose was plugged into were giving off the most terrifying sound the Doctor had ever encountered.

Rose Tyler was flat lining.

John was staring at the machines; all that was filling his mind was the single long hum that signaled the end of his existence. There was no way he could continue living without this woman. He stood slowly and backed away from the bed, burying both his hands in his hair and staring in horror as the medics rushed in, shocking her chest, sticking needles into her arms, and everything else they were 'supposed' to do.

But they weren't really trying.

Rose Tyler had been dead from the moment Mark Abrams had thrown debris on an alien crash site.

And then he saw it. The tears flowed fresh, as the medics began packing away their equipment and reporting time of death at 9:34pm, because it wasn't possible.

And then he saw it again, and John took a single step towards the bed, shock filtering over his face.

"Get out," he whispered, and the medics frowned at him.

"We did everything we could Mr..."

"I said get out!"

John didn't have time for their useless apologies, and there it was again. Rose was starting to glow with the light of the time vortex, and he didn't dare hope what this meant, but if Torchwood saw?

He shuddered to think.

He had to march the last of them from the room, claiming time to grieve, and slammed the solid door shut behind them. The useless medics who wouldn't even fight for her.

John moved back to her side cautiously, wary of hoping, scared not too, and studied the prone form of Rose Tyler. The machines were still emitting their useless singular tone, and then he saw it again.

The gorgeous golden glow that matched her hair shimmered and flowed over her skin. Where The Doctor exploded with light and fire, Rose was glowing from within, and suddenly the machines spiked with a sharp and secondary beat and John's breath was stolen from him.

He hadn't dared to hope. Almost wished he hadn't.

The time vortex had saved this woman, this keeper of his heart, from death, but she had just as surely ripped Rose from him as if death had stolen and kept her.

Time had given Rose the gift of a Time Lord. A new life, two hearts, and everything that came with it.

She would have to leave.

To survive this test, Rose Tyler needed a Time Lord.

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**Song Listened To: This Is My Last Goodbye – Trading Yesterday**

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**A/N: For Updates and News, please see my Profile page.**


	2. Walking The Timelines

**Walking the Timelines**

_Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak; sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go – Author Unknown_

John watched as the light seemed to brush her features into position, raising her cheekbones, angling her eyes to an almond shape, smoothing her waist...

It took him a few moments to realise that he was holding his breath as the damage from the alien ship explosion melted away to nothing, and he realised that, aesthetically at least, the regeneration hadn't changed much at all.

He released the breath he didn't know he was holding, the moment he saw her chest rise and fall with her first new breath, and tears of relief pricked at his eyes as he sunk back into the chair and studied the changes that the regeneration had wrought.

Her hair was longer. She'd cut it to her chin for this job at Torchwood, but it was falling past her shoulders now, reawakening memories of when he'd first met her; When The Doctor had met her. It was also a golden yellow that he knew she would approve of; it would save her re-bleaching the natural chocolate brown locks too.

John longed to see her eyes open, but contented himself with drinking in the sight of her raised cheekbones and creamy skin. He thought she might be a fraction taller but he couldn't be certain with Rose still out cold.

He knew from his memories that the regeneration process was exhausting and yet he still had to clench his hands around the arms of the chair he was in to stop himself shaking her awake, to find out how much had truly changed. Was she still Rose? His Rose? She'd called him Doctor... he didn't want to lose that so soon ... and yet...

The tears came again, from joy, relief, and an unutterable sadness. He _would_ loose her. They must find her a way back to her original reality... she would need the help of a Time Lord to fully understand, adapt and learn the new abilities she'd been granted. He could feel his heart breaking, and didn't notice her eyelids flutter open and new misty green eyes land on him.

Rose was waking up slower than she would have liked, but fought through the sheer exhaustion that was running through her. If she was dying she wanted to see as much of John as she could before the end and when she finally managed to drag her eyes open, the sight she saw broke her heart. She didn't think before she sat up and wrapped her arms around the sobbing man by her bed, freezing only when she realised that she should be in agony and drawing John's attention to her

"Oh Rose ..." his hug was crushing, and although she returned the embrace just as tightly, she didn't reply, the confusion stealing her words as she slowly tried to understand why she wasn't in pain. Had it been a nightmare? Had she really only been knocked out? Then why was her Doctor in such a state?

"Doctor, what's going on? What happened?" her voice sounded different and she bit her lip, confused ... something felt off, strange, like she wasn't comfortable in her own skin...

"You ... regenerated." John felt Rose jerk in his arms, and merely tugged her closer to him

"But that's ... I'm not a Time Lord ... Lady ... How...?"

"I can only speculate that it has something to do with the Time Vortex ... you need a Tardis medical bay to be sure."

Rose was tense as a bowstring in his arms, and she slowly moved backwards to look him in the eyes "What ... I mean ..."

He knew what she wanted to ask, and a soft smile passed over his face "Not much has changed ... You're a tad taller ... you're a natural blonde" he tugged on the long locks, pulling them in front of her face with gentle fingers, before trailing his hand down her cheek tenderly "You've got green eyes"

She was silent, scared, but her eyes never left his until he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead "If everything's fine ... why are you so upset Doctor?" and John released a sardonic laugh

"I thought you were dead, you flat lined ... Rose ... you will have to leave here" He knew what was going to happen, and was proven right when the shock filtered across her face, and she pulled from his arms

"What? ... So you're just going to send me packing because I've changed?" she demanded, confusion and pain warring over her new face and John shook his head "You're fine for the moment, but soon? You will need the other me ... the Time Lord me... there is so much that I can't teach you about this, that I can't help you with ... it's-"

"It's not fair" she cut him off, tears welling in those unique green eyes and he couldn't stop himself moving to her side and scooping her up, burying her face in tender kisses

"I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry, but I can't help but be glad ... I'd rather you not be by my side, and be alive ... than cold, and dead in that bed there"

Rose sighed and let the tears fall softly, wrapping her arms around John gently, and hiding her face against his neck "I know ... I'm sorry..."

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It took some fast talking to sneak the new and improved Rose out of the intensive care unit, but John was well known in Torchwood for his extensive knowledge of alien life, so when he blamed the medics for failing to ascertain hidden life signs, and the result was mild genetic modification, the bosses let it slide, and fired the medics in question.

No check ups were made, Johns qualifications as a Doctor forced the rest of Torchwood to accept his word that Rose was perfectly healthy, and made avoiding the explanation for two heartbeats that much easier. Even so it took the couple most of the day to get released from the intensive unit, and they barely made it back to their shared home for a late lunch.

Entering their large flat and slamming the door shut behind them, the two sighed and shared a relieved grin before Rose caught the sound of crying and slowly advanced further into the flat. Her mother was sobbing over open boxes as Jackie slowly packed up Roses things

"What are you doing?" John exclaimed, startling a sharp cry out of the elder Tyler, whose eyes narrowed when she laid eyes on the two

"You cheating, backstabbing git! While my Rose lies in that hospital dying, you're messing around with this slut!"

"Oh well trust you Jackie!" John snarled at the woman, calming only when Rose pressed a gentle hand to his arm "It's a long story, but he's not cheating ... I'm Rose... I regenerated"

Silence reigned while Jack studied Rose's face, and John merely continued glaring around the room, holding his tongue for Roses' sake alone

"You mean ... like what he does when he changes his face?" when Rose nodded, Jackie crossed her arms, and glared at the pair "I don't believe it ... my daughters not an alien! ... Prove it..."

Rose bit her lip, and glanced at John, sighing when he merely shrugged "Christmas ... back home, when the Sycorax invaded... you remember right?"

"Course I do!..."

"Well, when we was looking after The Doctor, I said he had two hearts ... and you asked what else he had two of..."

John choked, his eyes widening, and Jackie flushed, and unfolded her arms getting defensive "Well it was a valid question!"

"Rose, love, I didn't need to know that..." John caught sight of the bright grin that had spread across her face, and realised she'd used that particular incident on purpose, for the reaction it would draw, and wrapped her in a warm hug.

It seemed her sense of humour had gained a wicked edge to it.

Suddenly she shivered and fell against him as she expelled some of the golden glow that signified the time vortex.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Jackie launched in, frantically

"Relax Jackie, please ... The regeneration process takes time, and is exhausting, but we had to get her away from the Torchwood base... Do you know what they'd do to a Time Lord? If nothing else, she'd be under 24 hour guard..."

"I have to get back home, to the other parallel Mum" Rose started, breathlessly, but her mother cut her off sharply

"I thought you'd got over this! There's no way back, and you're happy here ... give it up Rose!"

"Jackie you don't understand" John explained gently, as he picked Rose up and moved her to the sofa, ignoring her weak protests "She's become a Time Lord ... and to help her adjust and control, she needs another Time Lord ... this is not something I can help her with"

"But you said there's no way back! Can't she learn on her own?"

"If I tried I'd go mad..."

John and Jackie both turned their eyes on Rose who flushed and ducked her head, but let John gently guide her face back to meet his eyes "How did you know that?"

Rose shrugged, gold flecks glinting in her eyes and John frowned "There has to be a way, but ... urg!" He stood and began pacing, scrubbing his hands against his scalp in irritation "Stupid tiny human brain, nothing works as quickly as it used to ... There's always cracks in the universe, but they're too tiny to travel through, breaking them wider shatters everything, so ...

"Why don't we temporarily expand the relative dimensions of the Tardis around the outside, reverse the effects...

"And make her smaller" they finished together, John locked his eyes with Roses' once more, shock fluttering over his face "Doctor ... I'm scared... Everything's happening so fast ... I can't..."

"We don't have a Tardis ... we need more time..." John whispered, moving back to her side, and letting Rose curl around him, her arms tight around his waist

Silence reigned and Rose drifted in and out of sleep, even as she felt the despair creep over Johns body, tightening the muscles and tensing his frame.

"Is using the Tardis the only way?" she heard her mother ask softly, and felt John shift a little as he nodded, relaxing once he had an outlet to release his pent up thoughts

"Yes ... there's no other way to slip through the tiny cracks in the universe without destroying at least two worlds"

"You'd let her go?" Jackie asked, her voice confused, and Rose frowned in her sleep at the judging undertone her mothers voice carried

"If I don't, her mind will burn up, she'll be just as dead as if she hadn't regenerated ... I'd rather she live away from me, than die by staying at my side"

Silence reigned once again, and Rose sighed when she felt Johns long fingers drift through her hair, a smile creeping over her strange new features. Everything felt tight, and she wasn't convinced she was going to get used to this new look of hers.

"We've ... Pete and I ... We've been keeping this a secret 'cause we thought you'd both leave ... but..." Rose could feel Johns body tightening again, but this time with suppressed anger

"Well you see, Pete's department found the wreckage of one of your ships... of a Tardis ... it's a wreck, a right bit of rubble, but they've said it's still got power..."

"Where is it?"

"Pete could get you too it, but it will take time..." Rose felt John growl, and traced her fingers up and down his side gently, feeling him jump and lean against her, but his body didn't relax

"I can buy her an extra day ... maybe ... If I share my memories with her ... but that will give us no more than two days for Pete to get us in, and then we'd have to fix whatever is wrong with the Tardis... it's risky, it'll be touch and go..."

"We don't have a choice though..." Rose murmured softly, still half asleep, and blinking at the two of them blearily "Mum ... Can you call Dad please?... don't bother explaining, you'll just confuse him..."

Jackie looked about to jump at her daughters tone, but John gently shook his head, a stern glare in his eyes and Jackie sighed

"Right then ... I'll go do that ... He's at home..."

Rose heard the front door click shut, and rubbed her nose against John's neck, grinning at the shiver she drew, and managing to smother a pout when her merely laid out on the sofa, pulling her on top of him, and let her fall into a healing sleep without so much as a word.

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Rose woke to the most delicious mixture of smells, and to the irritating fact that John wasn't where he was when she'd fallen asleep. Sitting up she ran a hand through her long blonde locks and huffed a soft sigh, she'd sort of missed having long hair. She pulled at the blanket someone, she assumed John, had laid over her and wrapped it round her shoulders as she padded towards the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe to watch John move around the kitchen fluidly, cooking up a huge array of foods that she had no hope of eating.

After a few minutes she began giggling, and he spun to face her, a manic grin on his own face and flour in his huge brown hair "You're awake! How're you feeling?"

"Better ... But what on earth's going on Doctor?"

"Well ... you don't know what you like yet do you? So I thought I'd make a nice broad selection for you to try with those new taste buds of yours" He grinned that grin that never failed to melt her heart, and a warm smile slid over her face

"I know something I'd like to try with 'these new taste buds,' as you put it" There was a glint to her eyes that made John pause in surprise, and his grin slowly slipped into a warm smile as he approached her smoothly, his lips brushing hers tenderly, she wrapped her hands around his neck and deepened the embrace, enjoying the shiver she felt travel Johns body before he slowly pulled back, resting his forehead against hers briefly

""I'm going to loose you ... so soon" he murmured softly, his voice broken, and Rose shut her eyes against the pain she could hear there

"Can't you come with me?"

His silence was answer enough, and Rose sighed, blinking her eyes open to meet his deep brown ones "I don't understand Doctor, why not?"

"Because he was right ... I'm too dangerous to exist in that universe... Do you know when you started calling me Doctor?"

Rose pulled back to regard him seriously "When I thought I was never going to see you again ... When I was dying"

John smiled, a gentle yet bright smile and he cupped her face in his hands "oh my Rose ... I love you so much, but doing this now ... I'm not sure I could survive our parting"

Her breath trembled as she sighed, but she nodded, tracing his face with her fingertips, and smiling when she watched him swallow but she stopped, seeing the struggle on his face "So, dinner?"

"Yes!" John announced enthusiastically, bounding away from her and draining some pasta while stirring some strange spicy smelling meat with his other hand. He was babbling away as he cooked, but his voice was becoming faint and a little distant.

Rose leant her back against the wall just as her knees gave out and her body expelled another burst of golden energy "...Doctor..." Rose couldn't focus her eyes but she heard a sudden clatter of kitchen utensils and he was suddenly by her side on the floor

"Rose! ... come on love focus on my voice, I need you to concentrate ..." he took her hands and she fought the sensation of falling, finally clenching her eyes shut, she snapped them open and found her vision filled with his concerned but focused face

"My memories will help you stay in control hopefully long enough to get you into that Tardis your mother mentioned, but you must enter my mind"

Rose was already arguing, she shook her head, instantly regretting it

"...all you have to do is relax..."

"No, I won't... there must be things you don't want me to see, I don't want to put you in that position ..."

John growled, having no time to explain to this beautiful woman that there was nothing he ever wished to hide form her, and pressed her hands to his temples, but he could feel the tension emanating form her body, he needed a way to make her relax and watching the panic on her face it struck him.

John knew that in the long run, this would cost him much more than the sharing of his memories, but he kissed her, his Rose, with everything in his heart, and felt her gasp at the intensity of it all. She knew what he was doing, he could tell in the way her body alternated between melting against him, and tensing in reluctance, but it took only moments, for Rose to groan and grip his face herself, leaving Johns hands free to wrap around her waist and lift her into his lap, letting her legs wrap around his hips, he couldn't stop a groan of his own, and felt her body relax into his before she gasped, and tensed.

He froze less that a moment later, when he felt her dance through his mind, and forced himself to relax. She was untrained, having no idea what she was doing or where she was going, and he hadn't told her that this would be painful to him

"_You should have ..."_

"_You wouldn't have done it..."_

"_Like you gave me any choice"_

He watched her mental imagine drift through every memory he'd ever had, every thought that had ever passed across his mind, every derogatory mention of humans, every snide comment his past incarnations had made, every ruthless decision, she saw the medusa cascade from three different eyes, and Gallifrey during it's best years, and watched as the world burned with Daleks filling the skies.

He studied her reactions to his mercy and his ruthlessness, she finally believed that she wasn't just another companion, although there had been a long line, she saw herself through his eyes on the first night he'd seen her, and felt his shame at thinking a human beautiful in any way. She saw him kiss Martha Jones to distract the Judoon, and Donna to avoid poisoning, and he watched her accept that, with a resigned sort of sadness that tore at his heart, and he watched her study his reactions to her reactions, before she suddenly spun in the landscapes of his mind, and hugged him, falling out of his thoughts and back into reality where she was crying against his chest at the overwhelming amount of information her Gallifreyan mind was attempting to process for her, while she was still trying to think like a human.

John had the worst headache he'd ever encountered, even with 900 years worth of memories, but Rose was his first concern. She was still in his lap, curled tightly against him, and he slid his arms around her waist, letting her cry. She stopped, slowly, and raised her gold flecked green eyes to his "Everything is different, 2 hearts, 2 sets of lungs ..."

"Extra brain capacity ... that's what you needed to understand to allow the regeneration to finish completing, you were still thinking like a human" he explained gently, there was a deep pain in his eyes that said he wanted her, the comfort of her love almost desperately, but didn't dare risk something that would be taken from him almost immediately. Rose needed the comfort she always found in his arms, but she could see that pain. She could acutely understand it, and so she locked down her own fears, and hugged John warmly, feeling him relax when the choice was taken out of his hands.

He stood, picking Rose up and gently placing her on her feet, and brushing hair out of her face tenderly, and an unspoken thank you for letting him escape the extra pain her departure would cause if he let himself give into her now.

"Weren't you going to let me experiment with some new foods Doctor?" Rose asked quietly, carefully breaking the intense moment, and laughing softly, when he cursed, and dashed to rescue dinner

She felt better. Rose knew it was only a temporary fix, allowing her mind to understand what was happening, and adapt for the moment. But she also knew from John's memories the only thing that he had tried to keep hidden. She knew that she would very soon begin seeing the timelines. All that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.

And if she hadn't found a way back to the other world and the other Doctor by then, she would go mad while her mind burned.

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**Song Listened To: Under My Skin – Trading Yesterday**


	3. And So It Burns

**And So It Burns...**

_I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.__ – Albert __Einstein_

They had slept curled tightly against each other, after finding that Rose didn't like chocolate, or tomatoes, but seemed to love sweet and sour sauce, and beef burgers ... just not together. John had been awake for sometime, but hadn't moved. He hadn't even opened his eyes, merely soaking up the comfort he could draw from the warm legs tangled with his own, and soft vanilla scented hair falling over his chest. He sensed her breathing change, and felt her lashes brush against his neck, and couldn't hide the shiver that she drew from him at the slightest touch.

"G'mornin'..." she breathed, getting a soft "hmm" in response, as he tugged her lithe from against him tightly, pulling a sleepy laugh from Rose. The moment was quickly broken by a series of rapid knocks on their front door, and they both jerked out of the bed quickly, scrambling for clothes like teenagers caught behind the gym building.

Rose was the quickest, slinging on a large flannel dressing gown she darted to the front door, barefoot and tugged it open after brushing fingers through her hair quickly

"Yes?" she blinked softly, and blushed "oh ... Dad ... hi, uh, morning"

"Been having fun?" the now nearly bald man asked sarcastically, eyeing her state of undress, before moving past Rose into the small flat, not noticing her eyes roll "Not that it's really your business since we moved out, but no, actually, John was frustratingly well behaved"

"Good morning Pete..." the part human time lord muttered from the bedroom doorway, thankfully fully dressed

'_At least one of us looks appropriate...'_ Rose though softly, before tuning into what her stepfather was saying

"So ... Jackie said you need to get to this Tardis wreck we've found, I don't know what you two have got cooked up, she wouldn't tell me, but I trust you Doctor ... John ... to look after her" Pete was saying, indicating Rose, and taking in his adopted daughters changed features without question, but with more than a hint of frustration too "I've got both of you access to the storage facility for today and tomorrow only ... that's it, and I've used more than a couple of favours to pull this off too"

"If we haven't got it flying by then, there's no solution anyway Dad" Rose added softly

"We're running on limited time Pete ... Thank you" John added, shaking his hand. Afterwards Pete stood glancing between the two, debating whether the question their action, or demand to know what had prompted this currant sequence of events, before sighing and shaking his head. Muttering a few gentle words, he dropped their storage passes on the coffee table and graciously backed out of the flat, trying desperately to avoid looking at Rose. Trying desperately to avoid any explanation that would have him in the same tearful state his wife had been in the night before.

Once the front door clicked shut behind him, Rose and John's eyes met across the room. They hadn't been fooled, and Rose's eyes glistened with tears at the pain this was causing everyone. It took John mere moments to be by her side, wrapping her in his arms as she released the last tears she was capable of crying for her family.

**

* * *

**

John sighed impatiently "What do you mean you can't let us in?" he demanded, and the young man was beginning to look nervous "You were all informed last night, we have passes, and we're members of the Torchwood team!"

"John ... They're only doing their jobs" Rose interrupted his tirade, and ignored his incredulous look "Now then, I know that my fingerprints aren't showing up on the system ... That's because I led a Recon team three days ago, and some of my biological make-up was changed do you understand?"

Her mist green eyes hardened as she let them scan over the two armed men causing them to saluted her nervously before she continued, "oh good ... now then, I am Agent Rose Tyler, identification number; Bravo, Alpha, Delta, Nine, Six, Five, Three, and my security access answer is "Canary Warf" ... any questions?" When the two men simply stared at her she smiled at John "I think I've convinced them, shall we?"

While her partner blinked at her in a similar manner to the men guarding the Torchwood Storage Facility, Rose merely wandered past them, and turned the corner at the end of the corridor before John cleared his throat, thanked the men, and jogged after her.

"How on earth did you know that would work?" he asked her once he caught up

"I didn't, which is why we're nearly running" she grinned, "Just in case they work out that I didn't really give them any proof... we're not the most secure secret organisation around are we?" she mused, pulling startled laughter out of John as he linked his fingers with hers, pulling her into flat out run through the multitude of rooms, containing all manner of alien artefacts.

"So, it was where again?" Rose asked him, once they were in far enough to feel that the guards couldn't, or wouldn't follow them

"Room T, Area 90..." John paused and glanced at her playfully, "why do I get the feeling that this isn't going to be easy to find?"

"Because it's not" Rose sighed and let her eyes wander up to the huge shelves surrounding them on two sides and frowned "I guess we'd better start searching..."

**

* * *

**

They weren't far off of room 'T', but it took the two of them longer than they would have like to find Area 90, let alone begin their search for the Tardis. Rose was sifting through the information John had implanted into her mind faster than he'd expected, picking up on random pieces of alien technology with interest, and he knew the information had come from his own mind when she laughed at a musical instrument and declared that it was "practically painful to human ears"

It was worrying him; what if they had less time than he'd predicted? What if she was already dying? They would need every second available to them to try and find what was wrong, and then fix the Tardis. He started out of his thoughts when her fingers laced with his, and he smiled at her. He could see the same worries reflected in her eyes, and sighed. He wanted to keep her safe, protect her from this, but she understood far too much now to do that.

"There's some odd bits of junk in here that we may be able to use to fix her up enough for flight" he announced, not really succeeding in lightening the mood

"If we can find her you mean?" Rose added, "What is she even going to look like...?" They both stopped walking as they turned a corner and found themselves staring at a familiar, if battered and beaten, blue police box

"You can always trust a parallel world to keep the disguise and perception filter damaged" John announced cheerfully, bounding over to the doors and stopping just in front of them, before pacing round the outside of the Tardis frowning.

"She looks so … old..." Rose whispered, not having moved from where they'd stopped walking, and John poked his head round the corner of the Tardis with a concerned frown on his features "Yes... well..." he cleared his throat and wandered towards her "When a Tardis' pilot regenerated, she gets a makeover and upgrade too … most of the time... it's why I haven't touched her yet … we want her to bond with you, not me"

Rose stared at him with sad eyes, at the state of even a parallel version of their old friend, but he had nothing to offer her, no words of comfort, and no further advice. She released a shuddering sigh and approached the blue box slowly, hesitating only a moment before she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Nothing happened.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, a flash of insight? The heart to open? An instant clean-up of the damage? But even as Rose stood on the slanted path that led to the door of the Tardis, she could sense that this ship was still alive. Still _aware_.

Tears prickled at the corner of her eyes at the debilitated state of this wonderful ship, and suddenly there was a noise, just a soft groan that was a remnant of what she was used to hearing from a Tardis.

Rose glanced back at John, standing outside of the Tardis, hands deep in the pockets of his suit. He wasn't looking at her, but at the damaged insides of this once beautiful ship. Rose swallowed, and moved further into the ships confines, her fingertips gently caressing fixtures and buttons, and drifted round the central control console.

She rested her palm over the hatch that held the heart of the Tardis, but moved on, deeper, exploring the once familiar corridors that lead to the kitchen, library, multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool, gardens that Rose had never understood and any other multitude of rooms that The Doctors Tardis had never introduced her too, and that this one kept her locked out of.

Eventually she found that the Tardis had directed her exploration, and led her back to the main console room. She felt her chest tighten and she stumbled against the wall as another wave of time vortex left her, making her dizzy again. She spotted John take a step towards her and reluctantly hesitate in the doorway, desperate eyes on her as he watched her start to cry

"I'm sorry..." she whispered, letting her new eyes rove over the extensive damage done to the complex ship "But I need your help" and there it was. The 'thing' she'd expected, a soft brush across her thoughts, and the lights struggled to flicker on, the central panel flashing like some sort of killer Christmas tree, and then Johns voice, breaking through her surprise

"You must come out now Rose, she needs to heal" The newly born Time Lord glanced over her shoulder, and studied the man she loved as he leaned into the Tardis, hand extended for her to take, and she smiled. It was bitter-sweet; happiness at having been able to help this ship, and a sadness that it meant she would be leaving. Instead of taking his hand, Rose struggled to her feet, and ran the length of the console room to launch herself into his arms, clinging tightly as he spun them both

They only released each other when the Tardis slammed her doors shut, and began hissing as she rebuilt and upgraded herself for her new pilot

**

* * *

**

"Do you feel up for some shopping?"

Rose sent a strange look at him, "Why? Thinking of getting me an Easter egg?" John blinked at her confused

"What? Is it Easter? I always had trouble finding Easter… anyway, no, I thought we could pick up some bits the Tardis might find helpful in fixing herself up... on Torchwoods tab of course"

They were walking hand in hand down random and yet familiar streets after leaving the Storage Facility 'for lunch'. At least that's what they'd told the men at the door.

"Yeah … all right then, I don't feel too bad … I'm still shedding that gold light but..."

"Ah humans are blind, they won't notice anything" he grinned at her, and she grinned back.

"So, where're we going?" Rose asked after they'd continued walking for a while

"I'm thinking that hardware shop in town might have a few bits of scrap metal she could utilise-" John cut off at Rose's laughter "What's so funny?"

"We're going to fix an alien space ship with scrap metal from a hardware shop?" she half whispered, letting the silence hang for a moment, before John began grinning too.

It took them no time at all to reach town, and for John to begin browsing shops that may have anything at all that the Tardis might possibly make use of. Torchwood outposts weren't too far from anything, really, it was just a matter of knowing where to look to locate them.

They bought wooden planks and metal grills, they bought nails, and nuts, and bolts, and sheets of glass, and string, and glue, and tennis balls, and light bulbs, and gear sticks... and when John picked up a set of bathroom taps, announced they looked "pretty", and flung them onto the shop counter as well, Rose had dragged him from the stores by force, despite her reluctant laughter.

They bother sobered quickly, however, when she stumbled, emitting another wave of golden light. John had dropped their shopping and hugged her too him while she recovered, but before he had a chance to ask her how she was feeling, their phones began ringing, and their eyes met.

"Torchwood"

Rose slipped her phone out of her pocket while John picked up the shopping again, and they began making their way back to the Storage Facility at a fast walk, very quickly switching from playful to professional.

"It's my day off, what's the emergency?" she snapped down the phone, her new voice taking on a sharper tone than was strictly necessary, but whoever was on the other end seemed to respond to the undertone of command that ran through it.

"..."

"I beg your pardon? Did you just say 'Code Red in 5 hours?" John sent her a glance, but she was frowning at the floor, carefully watching where she placed her booted feet as they hurried along the quieter back streets. Code Red was invasion. A big invasion.

"..."

"Well if they're not threatening, and don't have weapons charged it should be Code Blue... you do know the codes right?"

"..."

"How new are you? Oh for goodness sake, Code Blue is potential first contact, change that now... _yes right now_" Rose was silent for a moment and increased her speed to a jog to catch up with Johns long strides, slowing again when her Torchwood contact came back to the phone

"Good, that should calm things down … Now, do we have contact?"

"..."

"Hmm … Well, try and find out what they want, John and I are in town so we'll be around half an hour..."

"..."

"Of course we'll hurry, just don't panic... and for gods sake don't mention we killed one of them!"

Rose hung up, and dragged a hand through her long hair, when she met John's eyes the worry in them was clear

"It's the Caxtarids... ETA* 3 to 5 hours … We have limited audio contact, but from what Torchwood can gather they want something, something important" John winced and Rose nodded, "How much do you want to bet, they've come to collect their scouting party?"

**

* * *

**

They had moved their shopping back to the Tardis as quickly as they dared without drawing the guard's suspicions, and immediately caught a taxi to their department branch. It took mere moments before they were ushered into a conference room linked up to computers with audio-visual links to expert's world wide, and a large projection screen that was obviously set up for visual contact from the Caxtarids.

"What do we have?" John asked as they both moved to the empty chairs left for them , and one of the expert on the computer screens responded "Well, we've translated their message relay as best we can, and we believe it translates as something along the lines of "Humans... You posses a power/gift that you do not know/own. Caxtarids demand capture/collection of power/gift or will take/claim"... there are many variants in the way this could be interpreted but-"

"Can you play it?" Rose asked softly, "The original transmission?" The expert froze mid sentence and nodded, "certainly … but it won't do you any good m'dear, it's all in native Caxtar"

Rose watched John's face twitch and his hands clench together when the 'professional' referred to her so casually, and she could almost feel the threat line his body. He was watching her intensely for any sign of offence, and she smiled sweetly at him, making him duck and hide an embarrassed flush, before forcing himself to relax.

The elderly man leant off screen for a moment, and suddenly the conference room was filled with muted shrieks similar to those of the creature Rose had killed less than four days ago, interrupted at point with clicks and sighs. To anyone outside of Torchwood, it would probably be written off as white noise, but to Rose it was making a strange kind of sense.

"_Aliens … you shriek clacken mek shrasten point onwards meshtar net rastakken Caxtarids shriekas you hand over this power mlettar mess neshka on your putrid planet and nestan tesh katren force"_

Rose frowned, and pressed her fingers to her temples, shutting her eyes with a soft "play it again?"

This time it made perfect sense. This time she could hear exactly what the Caxtarids wanted.

"_Aliens... You posses power that from this point onwards you do not own. The Caxtarids demand you hand over this power source, or we will disembark on your putrid planet and take it by force"_

Rose met Johns worried eyes and raised an eyebrow, pulling a sigh from him, at least that part of the Tardis connection was working already

"Well, they don't sound angry..." she added, covering her request to hear the audio "But that could just mean they don't know about their advance guard being out of commission yet"

"This is a pretty straight forward transaction request" John suddenly jumped in, leaning back in his chair "I mean yes, there's the threat of invasion if we don't co-operate, but what did you call Rose and myself in for when you've got these experts in computer screens lining the room?" He glanced around the room, eyebrows raised in question, and their bosses shuffled

"We'd like you two to lead the negotiations"

"Excuse me?" Rose asked, sharing a worried look with John, besides the face she'd killed their scout, they needed to get the Tardis up and running, not worry about some mysterious energy source...

Everything clicked inside her mind, and she could practically feel the synapses of her brain leaping ahead. Power source that drew an alien invasion to earth; if this was the Sycorax instead of the Caxtarids it would practically be a de ja vu

"...feel that you've had enough alien exposure to be able to handle this better than any of us, and we trust that you will put Earth's interest first. We don't know what this energy source is, we can't know if they want to drag our sun off to another solar system, but we, as a board, are comfortable to let you two negotiate on behalf of planet Earth.

Rose felt sick. The energy source the Caxtarids wanted was her regeneration energy. The only way to save this earth was to leave it, and now she was trapped into negotiating with the things that wanted her body.

Could her week get any worse than this?

* * *

**Song Listened To: World On Fire – Trading Yesterday**

**Song Listened To: Under My Skin – Trading Yesterday

* * *

**

A/N:

* ETA = Estimated Time of Arrival


	4. Pieces Of My Broken Heart

**The Pieces Of My Broken Heart**

_The fear of death follows from the fear of life._

_A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. – Mark Twain_

It took a few minutes for Rose and John to excuse themselves from the room in between questions and suggestions on how to politically handle the situation, but once they managed to get free and into a private room, Rose began pacing. Brown eyes followed her movements for no more the a couple of second before she found herself wrapped in strong arms that made her sigh and relax into them almost against her will.

"Let me guess" John murmured after he could feel her panicked breathing begin to slow "The energy from the regeneration?" at her soft nod against his shoulder he sighed "I ... Time Lords that is ... we try to make sure that we're inside our Tardis when we regenerate, keeps the energy hidden from ... well anyone else"

"It's like Christmas all over again..." Rose replied, her voice muffled while she kept her head still buried against his shoulder

"Oh I don't know" John scoffed lightly, knowing exactly which Christmas she as referring to "could be worse, there's no pilot fish ... or killer Christmas trees..." he lowered his voice and brushed his lips against her ear, grinning when he felt her shiver and her arms tighten around his waist "and there's none of your mothers cooking either ... now _**that**_... _that_ was terrifying"

"Oi!" she exclaimed, pulling her head away from his shoulder and playfully smacking him on the arm as he grinned "That's my mother you're talking 'bout! ... If you're not nice, I'll tell her you said that" Johns eyes widened and his grin drifted towards uncertainty before Rose began laughing softly.

It faded as quickly as it came, and she sighed "What are we going to do John? How're we supposed to keep them from coming?"

He gently bushed the hair out of her face, and cupped her cheek with his hand "If the energy source disappears, they'll turn aside..." he paused when Rose shook her head

"And how are we supposed to get the Tardis ready to leave, with me in it, before they get here? When I'm supposed to be negotiating with them? ... We've got less than a guaranteed three hours!"

John studied her eyes and couldn't make out if it was fear he was seeing or a desperate kind of panic "Do you trust me, Rose?" he asked at long last, almost smiling at the immediate frown his question brought to her face

"Of course I trust you... what sort of a question is that?"

"Then trust me now when I say we will find a way ... I will not let them take you" he swore softly, his voice just above a whisper.

He was so earnest that Rose didn't have the heart to tell him that was half of what she was worried about. "We'd better get started on a plan" she whispered, drawing Johns gaze

"Hmm ... yes ... hang on" he moved to the door and poked his head out "oh, hello … could you please have someone inform the Caxtari that we demand … and make sure you get that … _demand_ a negotiations meeting as soon as they are within range for a visual link up?" Rose couldn't help but grin when he returned his attention to her

"Demand?"

"Well yes, responding to strength and all that … You're going to have to do the negotiating though aren't you?"

Rose sighed and nodded, "They see you on the vid-link and they'll just start laughing" John rolled his eyes, sat down, and pulled Rose into his lap, slamming some paper and a pen onto the nearest table "Bloody matriarchal species"

**

* * *

**

They'd cleared the room of her bosses. There was still half an hour before the agreed negotiations meeting but John had suggested they prepare the room to look more like they knew what they were doing.

Computer simulations of ship constructs and scans were filling the computer screens that had previously held video links of experts world wide, the tables were cleared so that it appeared this was a room set aside for intergalactic communications instead of a single woman making use of an empty meeting room to try and defend her planet through political games and physical cues.

That was going to be the majority of the conversation between Rose and the Caxtari representative. Less focus on the words and more on how they were phrased, physical cues and even the order in which the words were spoken. Even periods of silence could have meaning, John had told her, and to say she was nervous would be an understatement.

Rose was adjusting her notes for about the fifth time, shuffling through them to make sure she knew everything important when flashing caught her eye.

The visual link was fluttering to life, and Rose managed to keep the surprise from her face. They were early. She stared into metallic red eyes, framed by hair of the same colour, without flinching and after some long moments where, neither one of them moved, the Caxtarid hissed at her, irritation evident in every line of her sharp features

"Impressive … A human who does not fear" She spoke in English, but the grating hiss of her natural voice was still apparent in her words.

"You will find that there are many who do not fear you" Rose replied immediately, returning to straightening out her notes, removing her eyes from the Caxtarid and drawing another irritated hiss from the woman on the screen.

The words were not the whole conversation and John watched carefully, to make sure their plan was going as expected.

"You may call me Massina Talshek" the Caxtarid finally broke the second period of extended silence, and Rose raised at eyebrow at the screen

"Agent Tyler" she returned, she knew that "Massina" was the woman's battle rank, and she didn't fight off the small smirk at the surprise in Talsheks eyes when she responded with her own 'rank'. The red haired woman thought she was going to get one over on Rose, and had for the third time been beaten at her own word posturing.

"Enough games! You will hand over the power source!"

"This is a serious matter, you're threatening invasion of a class two planet, for a power source that you have no prior claims to... It does not belong to you... under section-"

"You dare to flash the intergalactic laws to me?" she hissed, and Rose froze, not entirely certain what the Caxtari meant "You insignificant life spawn, you who have never set your sights beyond your own planetary system, you … you who have never dreamed of the planets I have seen and walked upon and conquered, you dare to attempt to use the laws against me! I am Caxtari! We are among the most renowned species in the galaxy!"

Roses' spine straightened in indignation, the planets she ha never seen and dreamed of? Yet despite her fury at the woman's presumption she couldn't help but see the humour in Talsheks words either. Rose laughed. This was merely another showy display of political words. She noticed the glare darkening Talshek's face but couldn't help the laughter that was still emerging from her

"No you're not!" she responded at last, "And I'm certain that the Shadow Proclamation would love to know just how many planets you've walked on and conquered... in fact, why don't I just broadcast your ship ID on a long range frequency towards the coordinates 85.397.2094" she flicked her finger towards one of the computer screens near John without glancing at him.

He knew that she didn't actually intend to draw that kind of attention towards Earth, but as he moved to the screen, and blocked the view of it from the visual scanner, an idea of his own occurred, and he began tapping away at the keyboard as fast as his mind could process what he was doing.

"I will destroy your planet for that" the woman hissed, virtually slipping back into her own language, but first you will tell me where that power source is located" the menace in the Caxtari's voice was palpable, but Rose needed to stall them as long as possible, the more time the Tardis had to repair herself, the more chance she had of leaving and drawing the Caxtari away from Earth. And yet, Rose still hesitated. If she revealed that she really knew nothing then this would be over very quickly … but saw no other choice, she had to buy them as much time as possible. She wanted to glance at John for reassurance, but if she did that she would undermine her authority... at least from Talshek's viewpoint, and that was the one that mattered at the moment.

"We don't know what power source you're referring to... We cannot allow you to take something, when we don't' know what you would be taking, it may be something we have no need for … in which case you would be welcome to it .. however, it may also be vital to our survival-"

"You Lie! The Caxtarids are trained from birth in the art of torture, I could have your pathetic body writhing in agony and begging to do anything I asked of you, you will give us the power source!"

"I cannot give you that which I do not have!"

The two women froze, glaring at each other across a video link up, and then a hissing voice in the background caught Roses' attention

"_Cut the link, we've locked onto the source"_

Her eyes widened as Talshek grinned

"You had no intention of striking a deal" she whispered, wiping the smile from Talsheks face

"You cannot know our language..."

"Tell us the area's it's in and we'll clear the civilians out" Rose tried one last tactic, "No one needs to die here..."

"You're pathetic, all of your race should know how to fight!"

"Cut the link!" Rose growled, ignoring Talshek's rant on the Caxtarid's superiority "They're coming down"

She turned her eyes to John and watched as he tapped away at a computer nearly out of the range of the visual link up, the screen blocked from view with his body

"What are you doing?"

"Hacking their systems ... they're heading for ..." John froze, his fingers hovering over the keyboard , and a few moments later the screen went black

"They're heading for the Torchwood Storage Facility, only a small unit is heading here"

Rose closed her eyes, it wasn't just her regeneration energy they were after, although that was probably what had drawn them "They want the Tardis"

**

* * *

**

Rose and John flew out of the meeting room barking orders as they went

"Get U.N.I.T on the phone _NOW_, they need to evacuate civilians from the area surrounding the Torchwood Storage Facility" Rose ordered, feeling strange as her bosses leapt into action at her commands

"They have a maximum of 30 minutes to clear the area, start at the Facility and work out, their priority is the civilians, and we'll get our teams in to protect the equipment!" John added and Rose glanced at him, pausing her frantic movements and puling her eyes from her phone

"They're not using a transmat?" he shook his head, his brown hair wilder than usual "Shuttle down, I think they're going to crash it, it'll cause more damage... they'll transmat whatever they find back up"

"That's what the..." Rose's eyes widened while John frowned at her "the shuttle my team salvaged... with the lone Caxtari … it was a test run!"

"But they can't have known about the... well the power source then..."

"I don't think they were planning to invade here … we're just a convenient testing ground for new tactics" she spat, disgusted "we don't have time for this speculation, I'm calling in our teams, I trust them"

The men in suits; their bosses, shareholders, and head of departments, were merely standing there, trying to unsuccessfully follow the conversation, and with a sigh John placed a hand on Rose's elbow, and indicated that the suits should follow them as he started them moving down the familiar hallways. Rose dialled the numbers for their teams, while her partner began issuing instructions to the real people in charge

"The other Torchwood units can guard the building and surrounding area, we'll be taking our teams inside, to search, locate and defend or destroy the power source. If we can shut it down, all the better, the Caxtari should determine us worthless and leave with minimal casualties, but as of now this should be considered immediate Code Red"

As he spoke, gradually the people in charge left the procession to go and carry out his instruction, and by the time he and Rose got to the entrance of the building they had a police escort ready and waiting for them.

Rose hung up her phone just as she hopped into the back seat of the police cruiser, swiftly followed by John "They're all going to meet us there" she told him softly, and he nodded, wrapping an arm round her waist

"Will they ask questions?"

Rose just smiled "of course, that's why we chose them"

He sighed, resting his head against hers "Then we'd better hope they're more loyal to us than Torchwood"

**

* * *

**

They arrived at the storage facility to find it in a state of panic, but blessedly clear of civilians … for one block.

"There is a Code Red, in this area in less than fifteen minutes!" Rose shouted at the U.N.I.T chief, her gold flecked green eyes were more intimidating that her previous warm brown ones, and if they'd had more time John would have been amused at the obvious gulp the man gave

"Get these people out of here … we need at _least_ a three block radius cleared!"

She was furious, but Rose had just spotted her team on the edge of the barricade producing ID so dismissed the man from U.N.I.T to move to Johns side, his team had just made it through the check point and were already heading over to them.

Once they were assembled, Rose let her eyes rove over the familiar faces of her team as they soaked up her changes, questions on their lips but she smiled "No time right this moment for questions, we'll be working inside the storage facility, once we're in position you can drill me for information"

"Agent Tyler..." Her eyes landed on Mark, and he froze "I … I just wanted to say..."

"Forget it, everything worked itself out... and our teams are on first name basis" she added gently, watching the rest of her team relax with her dismissal of Marks apology.

The she frowned, "who are you?"

There was a taller name with oval glasses that she didn't recognise and he shifted From one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable under her scrutiny

"Charles Johnson ma'am … uh Rose..."

"He replaced Thompson" Sarah, the best tech analyst Rose had ever seen, jumped in saving the newbie from Roses immediate glare. She decided who was on her team! "And … I authorised it in your absence" the young woman added, Rose gritted her teeth a little, but she did trust the other woman so let it go "Fine, I haven't got time to discuss this"

"No we really don't" John added having explained the plan of attack to his own team "But right now, right this very moment we both need to know, honestly, which of you will put Torchwood before either of us, our order or our lives?"

You could watch the eight people before them freeze in shock, but Rose sighed "and we don't' have time for you to be polite about it … Mark?"

The man, obviously still wary around his team leader floundered for a moment before he gripped his hands into fists "I'm sorry ma'am, but I'd put your orders before Torchwoods"

The surprised her, but she smiled at him while John continued "Laura … Holly, you're the best marksmen I've seen in a while, who's order would you follow, Torchwood or ours?"

The two had been partners in crime long before Torchwood picked them up, and they only had to look at each other a moment before announcing "yours" brightly

"I'm with you" Charles Johnson added, his voice quiet, "I've been watching your work for a while … I trust both of you more than this organisation" Rose and John both fell silent for a moment before John beamed at the young man, before he spun his attention back to his team

"What about you Jacob?"

"That's a stupid question John, you tell me where to go, and get the job done for you... for you, not Torchwood"

"I like you John, but I'll follow Jacobs's instructions over you or Torchwood … of course if Jacob wasn't here I'd follow you so I guess that answers your question" Samantha teased her team leader, making the man roll his eyes

Rose chuckled, but then her blood froze "Torchwood … and I can't believe the rest of you wouldn't" George Thompson hissed, his tone disgusted and wiped the light banter from the group

"After everything Torchwood has done for all of us? How can you turn your back on them?"

"We're not, but we need each and every one of you to trust us to know what we're doing today and to follow our orders without question … if you can't do that leave now ... over there Captain Davies is organising the outer defence" Rose ordered quietly, hiding the hurt that one of her oldest team members had chosen to trust the company over her

he looked shocked, as though he'd thought that the test was to see who would betray Torchwood, but at the steel in Roses' eyes hit him, he shuddered, and turned, marching with over to the Captain without another word. Rose turned her eyes to Sarah who scowled at her

"If you even _ask_ me I'll shoot you myself"

Rose grinned at her relieved "Okay then people, lets get inside that building, we'll explain everything to you once we're inside"

"We've heard what's going on from control Rose" Holly piqued up but the blonde shook her head "only the official story … the only people on the planet who know what's really going on at the moment is us"

"And in five minutes, you guys will as well" John added with a sigh, trying to ignore the worried looks that passed over the combined faces of the best two teams Torchwood had.

**

* * *

**

They were moving through the Facility at a quick jog, guns drawn and suited up in bullet roof vests over their clothes. How often did bullet proof vests stop alien weapons? Never Rose knew, and yet it was still regulation uniform.

The teams were silent. As soon as they were inside and out of earshot of the ranks of men and women guarding the doors, John and Rose had explained everything to the seven people with them. Everything from time machines and Time Lords, to parallel universes and regeneration, and to what had drawn the Caxtarids attention … and to how they were going to remove the aliens' attention from Earth.

The teams were silent. Rose had seen the distress on her teams faces, they didn't want her to leave, and yet they were professional enough to realise that this was the only viable plan without starting a war they had virtually no hope of winning.

The teams were silent. They passed round familiar shelves of items that reached to the high ceiling of the warehouse, past dozens or more locked rooms that held larger alien artefacts beyond name, except for Roses' new mind and yet, the longer they moved, the more worried Rose was becoming that they were lost.

The teams were silent. Only because they'd been promised answer to any question they asked once they were in defensive positions around the Tardis. Rose knew they were all deep in thought and hoped nothing surprised them, because for once she wasn't sure her team would react quickly enough.

The teams were silent when they finally arrived in the large alcove hiding the Tardis from view, until they saw her, and someone laughed

"It's just a box!" Rose ignored whoever it was, and move forwards brushing her fingers over the door. The paintwork was bright and new, and the glass in the windows crisp and clean, although still frosted "Has she finished?" she asked over her shoulder, watching John nod.

It took Rose a moment to steady her breathing as she pushed both doors of the Tardis open revealing the inside, and now the teams were _not_ silent.

"Oh my god ..."

"It's beautiful!"

"What that...?"

"It's bigger on the inside!"

"What Torchwood wouldn't' give..."

Exactly" John jumped in, "What wouldn't Torchwood give to get its hands on this?" everyone fell silent, turning their eyes on him as Rose continued to gaze into the interior of the old Tardis.

"This is why we asked who's order you would follow first and foremost, they must never know that had this machine in their grasp... after today, Rose Tyler will have been shot by an alien weapon and disintegrated"

"John?" Rose called softly, running her eyes over the rest of the team "Get into position, anywhere you think would be best suited … you're the best Torchwood has to offer, I trust your judgements"

John made his way to her side and she let him see into the Tardis. She'd repaired herself, but the lights were dim, the colours dull, and the groans sounded pained

"She's dying" Rose informed him softly, "I'm not sure … I mean she'll get me through to the other side, but ..."

"Will she get you to me..." he finished, shutting his eyes, and gently stroking the door of the old machine with a sigh "It's still our best option"

"We have to try" Rose agree, and the Tardis and a soft sound that almost equated to a purr... she would try as well, if only for one more touch of a Time Lord before she shut down for the last time.

**

* * *

**

Rose had been inside the Tardis with John, carefully rewiring the old girls circuits to reverse her relative dimensions. Rose would have to expand the effect to the outside of the Tardis mid flight, but the wiring was something they could do while they waited.

They had just replaced the grating over the circuitry, and were about to do a basic scan of her system to check the efficiency when they felt the Caxtari shuttle crash nearby. As the shock waves hit, the ground trembled and it took everyone a few moments to steady themselves, but the banter and questions halted and everyone went onto high alert, John joining them with a weapon of his own, while Rose continued to work on the Tardis, flying round her console.

It took mere minutes, maybe ten for a small unit of Caxtari to arrive and Rose grit her teeth, trying to focus over gunfire as she attempted to calibrate the Tardis' flight controls to compensate for the twists in the relative dimensions she would wrap around the Tardis' exterior. The shuttle was a diversion, they would never have fought their way through the entire London branch of Torchwood to this location in ten minutes, so it followed that this team had arrived via transmat, and hadn't expected any resistance at the source of the power they had detected.

That meant that more would be coming when this group did not return, as the gunfire ceased brushed her now long hair away From her face "Prepare for reinforcements!" she shouted out of the open Tardis door. She knew she should shut them, but she couldn't bear not seeing what was happening to John, and their teams. Suddenly, hanging on a thin chain attached to the console in front of her were three shining keys. Tardis keys.

Tears filled her eyes, and she moved to the door of the Tardis quickly "Doctor..." she called, drawing John attention, and he must have see the change in the light that she could feel glowing against her back because he moved from his cover with only a quick glance to see that no more had yet arrived, and made his way to her side.

John slung the gun he had over this shoulder and wrapped Rose in a crushing hug. He knew he had to let her go, but the pain of this moment was rivalled only by other time he thought he'd lost her or had had to let her go. Satellite 5, New Earth, That thrice damned beach in Norway...

"I love you, my Doctor" she whispered to him, hearing the hum of the Tardis grow, and she felt him jerk in her arms. Her eyes widening, her perfect Gallifreyan mind replayed everything from the moment she'd opened her tear-filled eyes at her final confession to the second his body had jerked in her arms.

Over his shoulder the first of the Caxtari's second wave appeared, transported directly in front of her team, giving them no warning, and the humanoids finger went to the trigger, pulled it tight, the weapon recoiled against the metallic body, the whispering through the air of the energy pulse set on full, shown by the blood red glow the bolt had as it hit John right in the middle of his spine.

"No..." Rose whispered, suddenly finding herself supporting the vast majority of Johns weight "No...!"

"Go, Rose, Just **GO**!" Sarah, her second in command, issued the order, and Rose's mind was too far gone into shock to do anything other than obey. She pulled the John's gasping form into the Tardis and slammed the doors shut.

With tears streaming down her face and the sympathetic brush of the Tardis against her mind as the machine felt her pain, Rose threw in the destination co-ordinates, and let her take off. Her green eyes kept darting to Johns Form, but she couldn't go to him, she had to watch where they where … _when_ they were... she had to wrap her Tardis' dimensions around the ship at just the right moment … in … time...

The ship jolted and groaned as she was forcefully shrunk and simultaneously thrown through a crack in space and time, slamming painfully back into Rose' universe. Rose let the dimensions snap back inside the Tardis, returning her to her normal size, and leaving the ship floating in the time vortex to recover before speeding to John's side.

His eyes were shut but at her soft hesitant touched they fluttered open. His breathing was harsh and unsteady, and a trickle of blood was colouring the edged of his lips. His eyes darkened as he watched her sob, and he struggled to bring his hand to her cheek and brush the tears away

"I love you too, My Rose … That why I know... you'll be all right... you'll survive … Because I love you … and Here I love you... too"

"But he's not you..." she gasped, clinging his hand like a lifeline and unwittingly repeating the words she'd muttered to his Time Lord self on that freezing beach just over a year previously, and John grinned at her as his breathing failed.

"Of course... he is... He needs you... and that's very... me..."

As John hand finally went limp in hers, Rose cried, and wept, and in her mind she screamed.

* * *

**Song Listened To: Jesse Hold On - B*Witched

* * *

**

**Song Listened To: May I? – Trading Yesterday;**

"_**May I hold you? As you fall to sleep,**_

_**When the world is closing in, and you can't breath,**_

_**May I love you? May I be your shield?**_

_**When no one can be found, May I lay you down?"

* * *

**_

A/N: Yes ... I know that the regeneration cycle for a Time Lord is 15 hours, however, due to my lack of foresight, and general forgetfulness to do my research, for the purpose of this fan fiction, for female Time Lords, it's 24 hours. :) On another note ... I wasn't going to post this story until I'd completed writing it... but from the first wonderful reviews I'm glad I've posted it early ... This has got to be the first time I've read reviews that have made me feel like the readers are actually enjoying the story, and not just saying nice things cause it's expected :D so thank you very much, all of you!


	5. Despair In All Its Different Shades

A/N: I had a rough sort of plan up until this point. Now my plan is complete and I need to make a new plan; Updates may be slightly slower, but we'll see. Now we're back in normal Time Lord Doctor parallel world, and this chapter, as you'll probably guess, is set in the same time period as "End of Time: Part 2" … Some of this will be directly paraphrased from the episode, but I'll try to keep that section interesting. Enjoy.

**Despair In All Its Different Shades**

_"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge, _

_myth is more potent than history, _

_dreams are more powerful than facts, _

_hope always triumphs over experience, _

_laughter is the cure for grief, _

_love is stronger than death" - Robert Fulghum_

Rose didn't know how long she'd sat there crying, cradling John's cold hand in hers but eventually, at the Tardis' gentle urging, she stood. She couldn't bear to move his body. She left him where he'd taken his last breath and dazedly moved to the Tardis console without another sound. The Tardis was dying, even while soaking up energy from the Vortex, but she wanted to help her pilot find what she was looking for before shutting down her systems for the last time.

Rose knew how to fly the Dr's Tardis from John's gifted memories, but this one was slightly different, and after a few false starts, the sentient ship began giving Rose a soft nudge when she was hovering her hand over the correct control. This drew a tiny smile from the woman turned Time Lord, but grief was still racking her body. Only the burn of vortex energy was keeping her focussed enough to run a scan for other Tardis'.

A few jumps through time and space to run scans over The Doctors favourite planets, and preferred times and they found themselves floating over Earth, 2009. The Tardis was getting tired; she was beyond old... when suddenly her screen blinked into life to show a manor house. Rose frowned and after a couple of mistakes, began running more scans of the structure for Time Lords. She didn't know what was in her Tardis' memory banks, but then, on screen... there was The Doctor.

Hurt … and angry, and the Tardis picked up on her distress, taking control of her flight trajectory from the distracted Time Lord she began materialising into the room, right in front of him. But Rose couldn't take her eyes off of the shock on his face. She watched him stiffen, and her fear overtook her.

Rose looked at the doors to the Tardis and back at the screen … would his curiosity win? Would he come in to her?

The answers were already in her mind. No. It was unpardonably rude to enter another's Tardis without permission. Taking a breath, Rose clenched her hands around the console edging and shut her eyes, before taking a step towards the Tardis doors.

"No! Don't go out there!"

**

* * *

**

He could hear his breathing rattle through his secondary respiratory system, and the sharp pain that pulled through his chest made him gasp.

"I'm alive...?" The Doctor stared at the shattered glass around him as he struggled to sit up, hope welling up inside him, he couldn't stop the relieved gasp of "I'm still alive!" escaping him as sobs began racking his body.

He couldn't decide if he was ecstatic or devastated by that fact. For a brief time, as terrible as the Time Lords breaking out of the time lock had been, The Doctor had once again been able to feel their presence in the back of his mind, it has been a comfort and a terrible truth, and now, once again, he was totally and completely alone in the universe and he felt the pain of that devastating loss once again. This regeneration wasn't built to deal with this level of grief like his 9th self had been.

But in the long run he'd won, and at the end the Master had redeemed himself... had helped him and helped to save the world. A thousand thoughts were flying through his mind, and yet as relief began flooding through his system, his blood suddenly turned to ice.

*knock, knock, knock, knock*

***knock, knock, knock, knock***

His thoughts froze and the smile stiffened. He could feel the cold hard fury of the Oncoming Storm flooding his mind as the prophecy completed itself with the help of that _stupid_ human.

_***knock, knock, knock, knock***_

He sat up slowly, but couldn't bring himself to look at Wilf, banging on that cursed glass. The hate in his heart would have chilled him, except that he was already too desperate and angry to care.

_***knock, knock, knock, knock***_

Four knocks … Four times … He slowly turned his gaze on the man and he watched dispassionately as this old, feeble being froze at the hardness of his gaze.

"Uh … yeah … good-oh... if you could, uh, let me out..."

"Yeah..." the ice in his voice was shocking. There was none of the warmth and enthusiasm usually found there, and the human began babbling at him

"I mean … This thing seems to be making a bit of a noise..."

The Doctor grit his teeth and stood, blocking out the pain. He didn't care; he couldn't escape this fate, could he … Maybe …

"The Master … Left the nuclear bolt running … it's gone into overload …" could he? Couldn't he? The choices, oh what difficult choices to make this day …

"And that's bad is it?" caught his attention, and he couldn't stop the sarcasm. What kind of a stupid question was that? Humans!

"No..." The doctor tipped his head lightly, his calm belying the turmoil underneath "'Cause all the excess radiation gets vented inside there..." he nodded at the container the old man was in, and struggled with himself over the satisfaction he felt when Wilf glanced around, worry eating at the edges of the humans face. His voice was shaking, he knew, how could he find satisfaction in the terror he knew would hit Wilf when he realised he was going to die?

"Vinvochi glass … contains it ..." it would be much safer to let the human be, let his life end here as a casualty of the Masters meddling, and the shaking in his voice calmed. "All five hundred thousand rads about to flood that thing..."

"Oh ..." Wilf smiled, he had the audacity to smile! "Well you'd better let me out then" The Doctors voice darkened again, how dare this human assume he could do this, that he _would_ do this!

"Except it's gone critical..." He felt the disgust at the hint of enjoyment in his tone when he began explaining everything to the human. Realisation began creeping over the man's features. He would stay in there … Could he? Would he?

_Rose would know …_

"Touch one control and it floods … " He pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and almost smiled, it was bloody useless, it was one or the other, one of them was going to die today … and damn it, why should they?

"Even this would set it off..." he twirled the useless piece of junk between his fingers, a remnant of a more cheerful Doctor, a nervous twitch for this one, who hadn't decided his course yet. His mind was demanding he leave this worthless thing in it's cage like it deserved and yet …

"I'm sorry..."

He turned away from Wilf, in the glass cage, and whispered "yeah ..." they were always _so_ sorry...

"Just leave me..."

He stared at the floor, gritting his teeth together when Wilfs words entered his mind, and tears began flooding his eyes. Oh if only … could he? Would he?

He glanced at this silly, stupid, _worthless_ human, who was willing to stay in there and give his only singular life for him! The Doctor! The man who was currently actually considering leaving him there to burn. The grandfather of his best friend. How would he ever be able to look Donna in the face again?

"Ok... right then, I will..."

He couldn't.

More than that he wouldn't.

_You never would, you coward..._

And then the anger hit. It wasn't Wilfs fault, this had all be manipulated, and determined _long_ ago, but he was there, and he couldn't run away and The Doctor was going the burn for him so he could _take it!_

He spun away from the cage and began pacing randomly across the glass covered floor "'Cause you had to go in there, didn't you?... you had to go and get stuck! Oh yes!"

He was angry, upset, so, **SO** sad... his hearts were breaking, but he couldn't leave him in there.

Couldn't and wouldn't.

"...'Cause that's who you are … Wilfred" his voice was shaking again, tears threatening him as she stood there, not able to look at this one, singular, worthless, human being...

"You were always this … waiting for me … all this time..." He knew it wasn't this man's fault, but it made everything so much easier if he could blame him. He did blame him. He had to blame him. But he wouldn't... biting his lip, he fought back tears, and lowered his head again.

"No really … Just leave me …" and he sounded so convincing... so sure … so resigned … The Doctor grit his teeth; Could he?

"I'm an old man Doctor! I've had my time"

"Well exactly look at you?" Did this man actually think he would? He was the _Doctor_ wasn't he? This is what he did! "Not remotely important!"

He shifted his weight, fury burning through him, but it wasn't at Wilf. He knew it wasn't at Wilf.

"But me!..." The Doctor turned away from the old man once again, his emotions swirling almost to fast for him to follow, he'd faced regenerations before, why was this one so different? With tears choking him he stared at the sky through the broken ceiling as he continued his raving

"I could do so. Much. More...! …. **SO MUCH MORE**!" Despair wracked him, why did this decision hurt so much? He leant his hands against on of the desks lining the room and bowed his head "But this is what I get … My reward..." he finished in a sneer. There was a moment of silence before rage took over once again and everything before him went flying across the room, "_**WELL IT'S NOT FAIR**_!"

His body tightened like a spring and he began gasping as he realised the truth. _Rose_.

He would never get her back.

Could never get her back.

She would never, _could_ never recognise him again if he regenerated now. He looked at what he'd done. Not just now, but earlier too … he'd been so willing to kill, to bring death and destruction … would she recognise him now, even without a regeneration? Would he want her too?

The words he had spoken in Bad Wolf Bay reverberated around his mind...

"_You saved me … You made me better..."_

Oh the irony wasn't lost on him. He'd tried to stay the way she'd shaped him, but without her, the light was gone from the universe, there were bright spots... but Rose? Rose made everything _glow._

"Oh ..." he sighed, shaking his head and making his decision "I've lived too long..." He slowly made his way towards the other door, Rose would be ashamed of him. He was ashamed of himself. It was time to regenerate, maybe next time … well … there was screaming in his mind, and he wanted it to stop.

"No ... no, no please... please don't...! NO DON'T … **DON'T PLEASE!** _**PLEASE DON'T**_ … _PLEASE_!"

The old man's begging was easy to ignore, The Doctor _was_ ignoring it, but what did still his movements, just as his hand brushed the handle to the other box, was the whirring of Tardis engines, and confusion flooded his system.

Wilf began looking around him, and the Doctor's eyebrows practically vanished into his hair and his jaw dropped open as he watched The Tardis … no, no, _**A**_ Tardis materialise inside of the small space Wilf was trapped in, scooping him up in the process. It just fit, tightly, and he froze, not daring to breath in case it shattered to vinvochi glass that would contain the radiation.

This was not his Tardis. But then who...?

He didn't know … but it was then, and only then, that he realised – the screaming in his mind, was not due to his own thoughts.

**

* * *

**

"Wilf?" Rose had screamed and spun with a hand pressed tightly to her beating hearts, and stared wide eyed at Donna's grandfather

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing... How do you know who I am?"

Rose froze, blinking and shook her head, she didn't have time to share stories "Why can't I go out there?"

The old man hesitated, but after biting his lip and glancing around the Tardis interior, he burst into rapid speech

"Well you see … I was in a cage that was about to flood with radiation you see, and the doctor was going to die to get me out and I begged him not to, but then you appeared sort of over me you see? And then..."

She waved her hand at him "Stop ... just slow down..." Moving back to the viewing screen, Rose saw that The Doctor hadn't moved, and looking closer she realised that the Tardis was pressing against the confines of whatever was supposed to be containing the radiation

"Oops..." The ship groaned, and Rose ran her fingers over the control column soothingly without thought "one more jump, dear one, then you can rest, I promise ..."

Her fingers flew over buttons and controls, minimizing the movement of the ship as she dematerialised, and hopefully avoiding damage to the radiation cage. Her breathing caught when The Doctor vanished from her viewing screen, but it was mere moments when he reappeared there, still staring at the box the Tardis had vanished from, before spinning on the spot with confusion and no small amount of fear on his face to watch it reappear behind him.

The engines stopped, and the hum of the Tardis was once again low and mournful, as it had been when Rose and … well when they came across her in Torchwood Storage. Rose let a few more tears slide for the ship that had saved her. And brushed gentle fingers over the controls and console.

"You ... uh … you all right there?" She nodded slowly, he didn't recognise her … why should he? He only met her once … Would the Doctor?

"Yeah … well go on then … better let him know you're ok … I'll be out in a minute..."

She watched the old man stagger out, and then on the screen watched as he tottered over to The Doctor and wrap him in a hug. The pain and relief on The Doctors face was almost palatable and Rose hung her head, feeling the long tresses of her fall forward and hide her face.

"When you shut down your systems, and die … your doors will close and never reopen, am I right?" she whispered to the empty Tardis, the air quickly becoming stale. She felt the old girls answering hum of confirmation and sighed. John was dead, the Tardis was dying …

"I have one last request to make of you … would you honour me … would you protect his body for the rest of time? Let him stay here ..." Rose was interrupted by a sleepy brush of contentment against her mind, and smiled. The Tardis would do this for her, would keep John safe from anyone and anything for all of time.

She was ready to leave, ready to face this Doctor that she did not know. Her steps were slow and measured. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was still dressed in the black suit, white blouse and bullet proof vest of her Torchwood counterpart, and just as aware that it did not suit her new body despite the minimal changes to her physical appearance.

She could hear Wilf babbling away, scolding the Doctor for being willing to throw his life away for one old human, but that's who The Doctor_ is_. Always willing to sacrifice more than anyone for the safety of anyone.

She stepped outside of the Tardis carefully, taking in the destruction slowly, and the doors shut ever so gently behind her. The light from within the Tardis dimmed, but did not die, not yet. She would linger for as long as she could to see if her Time Lord was safe.

"Hello Doctor" She spoke slowly, watching the edges of madness she recognised from the 9th self buzzing around the edges of his eyes.

The Doctor froze, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. If this was a vision it was too cruel, and if it wasn't then he wished it wasn't happening. If she was here... _really_ here, then the worlds were cracking all over again … and he was too tired, in too much pain, to cope with that

"You can't- can't be here ..." he gasped, ashamed to hear his voice break with a sob, and Roses' face softened

"It's not what you're thinking … Trust me, please..."

Her hearts broke at the anguish on a face identical to the one that lay dead on the floor of her Tardis. This was too close. Too soon. Too raw. As The Doctor collapsed slowly to his knees with tears flowing down his face, Rose set aside her fears and concerns, she set aside the knowledge that she had a mere hour left before the vortex would burn her mind from the inside out, and skidded to a stop on her knees before him, wrapping the familiar form in one of her warmest hugs.

If this was all she got before her mind was ripped to pieces by gold and fire, then this was what Rose would take. It wasn't John, it wasn't even The Doctor that she left behind, but when had that ever stopped her before?

The Doctors mind wasn't making such clear cut decisions, it was in turmoil. If this was a vision, then he was sure his mind would finally snap when it faded, and then he felt her arms around him, and couldn't stop himself returning the embrace with a crushing, desperate grip. If this was real? And the universes weren't colliding? How was it possible? It wasn't … if it had been possible he'd have gone after her the first time she'd been trapped there ...and yet … his mind stilled, he couldn't focus on this right now.

Everything hurt.

His body. His mind. His hearts.

If she left now she would rip his soul from his body.

He clung to her and sobbed. She did the same.

**

* * *

**

It took time for Rose's silent tears to fade, and for the Doctors form, that was wrapped around her like a blanket, to stop shaking. Wilf didn't know what to do. He felt like an intruder on such a private moment, but had no way of giving them some privacy, so he sat in one of the chairs, and tried not to look like he was keeping an eye on them.

It took time, but the tears did stop and the shaking did still. The Doctor pulled away from the blonde woman, and simply stared at her in silence. She let him, and stared back. Slowly long fingered hands were brought up to touch her hair, hesitating and causing warm brown eyes to fill with pain once again, until surprise took over when the blonde pushed his hands to her hair. The conversation was soundless, portrayed through actions alone. Neither one breaking the delicate spell.

I'm real, this is me...

Fingers trailed through the long tresses, and came to rest lightly on the thin shoulders, as his face began to calm

Yes you are, how is this possible?...

Her strange new eyes glistened with tears as she studied the cuts and gashes over his face. Her own delicate hands brushed over the damage, and it pulled together as gold danced out of her skin making her sway, and her eyes loose focus

There is much to explain, many mysteries that need solving...

His hands went to her waist as she swayed, and panic flashed over his face once again, before he frowned at her

"Where's … well the other me?" he watched those glorious green eyes fill with fresh, raw pain and drop away from his face. He winced, more worry entering his heart.

But that's … you're not … the screaming … that's you...?

His brown eyes flashed to Wilf, and he sighed, dragging himself to his feet. He is only half surprised, and slightly more than terrified to find that the pain is gone, and he'd gained more questions than answers, but this. Was. Rose.

And he wasn't letting her go. Not for a second.

"Come on, lets take him home..." He whispered softly, pulling her to her feet and watching a calmness he didn't remember spreading over her slightly strange face.

So many questions.

But there was time. Right?

* * *

**Song Listened To: Episode "End of Time Part 2"

* * *

**

**Song Listened To: Hold On To Our Love Tonight – James Fox**


	6. At The End Of The Day

**At The End Of The Day**

"_Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."_

_A__n__dre Gide_

The short jump from the mansion house to Wilf's home was made in silence. Rose shifted her weight and smothered a sigh, you could practically cut the tension with a knife, and her nerves were starting to act up the longer The Doctor stayed silent.

They landed, and Wilf was outside before anyone could speak. The Doctor met her eyes briefly, before following the old man and leaving Rose to sink into the pilots' seat.

"oooh, she's smiling, as if today wasn't strange enough...", He tried for a smile, but was pretty sure it came out a grimace as Wilf laughed at him so he gave it up, letting the frown take over his features. The Doctor was acutely aware of the blonde sitting inside his ship who shouldn't be there, and forced his eyes to Wilfs.

"Anyway … don't go thinking this is goodbye Wilf... I'll see you again... one more time" did he feel guilty, taking his fury out on this man, when he'd somehow escaped his preordained fate anyway? A little, but the burning anger was still there, settling into his hearts; it was finding a different focus but it was still there.

"What do you mean? When's that?" The human's voice drew his attention again and he sighed, so many questions!

"Just … keep looking... I'll be there"

"Where are you going!"

The Doctor stilled, staring at Wilf. He was sure his hearts had frozen, and he knew that he'd stopped breathing. Where was he going? Back inside the Tardis. Where an impossible woman sat. Back to a cursed beach, to take her home. To the heart of a nebula to repair the damage she must have caused arriving, or …

He looked away, and swallowed hard. Pausing, hesitating, he shouldn't even be thinking it …

"To get my reward..." he stepped backwards inside the Tardis before the old man could argue any more, and shut the door, shut out that world that he'd just saved at such a high price, and now he had to pay a higher price.

How many times could he say goodbye and still stay in one piece?

**

* * *

**

The Doctor entered the Tardis in silence and made his way over to the control column, slipping them into the vortex, and pulling the viewing screen to where he could study it with a frown. All without turning his eyes on the blonde woman currently sitting in the pilots' chair of his Tardis.

"What are you doing?" she asked softly, a frown working it's way onto her features as she studied the levers and buttons and switches he activated, but his way of flying was so random, and filled with so many useless steps, that it was an impossible puzzle

"I'm looking for the hole you punched through the walls of the universe getting here, so that I can take you back"

The tension in the room spiked, he felt it, but he didn't stop the Tardis' scans

"You can't take me back"

"Yes I can..." he froze when she laughed though. It wasn't the same laugh he remembered, and he frowned at her

"You can't Doctor, there's no hole, there's no damage"

"There must be... you couldn't have got here otherwise … and how did you pilot that Tardis? Well the other me must have set the co-ordinates and set you off, he'd have done anything for you..."

"Oh really?" her voice was like ice and he couldn't stop the shiver. He knew he was pushing for a Tyler-slap here, but the anger was burning in him again, and he didn't care "And why do you think that?"

The Doctor was silent for a moment, before continuing in a rush "Because we're the same, and I'd do anything for you, but this was reckless even for me!"

"You'd do anything for me?" Rose was next to him, but he ignored her until she grabbed his arm and tugged, then he turned his glare on her, watching her flinch was satisfactory, and sickening, what was wrong with him?

"Of course!"

"Then set her down and let me explain!"

"There's nothing to explain...!"

"There's everything to explain, he's _dead_!" Rose gasped, tears filling her wide eyes and her shoulders tensed as she pressed a hand against her mouth. She turned her back to the Doctor, and wrapped her arms around her waist, but didn't speak another word.

Then suddenly, and surprisingly smoothly, the Tardis' engines stopped. They landed. "I'm sorry" he whispered

"You lied to me" she hissed back, still fighting off another flood of tears "You said you'd be all right... 'Same old life' is what you said, but you've changed"

He didn't reply, he knew she was right, but as he stared at her back, watching her try to hold herself together, he could feel the 'Oncoming Storm' fading away, and calming again. He couldn't risk this, she had to go back... but the Tardis hadn't found any damage to the walls between worlds. Just like she'd said.

"What happened?"

"How long has it been for you? Here?" She asked softly, still not turning to face him

He hesitated, but eventually sighed, running a hand through tousled brown hair before wincing. He'd forgotten about the numerous cuts and other damage done to his body via skydiving through a glass roof

"About four months …"

"It's been just over a year for me" She replied "John … John Smith … You know for a man with over 900 years worth of memories, he wasn't very creative when renaming himself … We moved out of Pete and mums place within a month, with a recommendation from me and Pete, John started working for Torchwood" she laughed, leaning back against the console of the Tardis and turned her eyes back to him at last

"Got a good laugh out of that one, _The Doctor_, working for Torchwood ..." The Doctor merely smiled at her, letting her carry on uninterrupted "We were both given our own teams around 6 months ago, every member hand picked by us for their skills and our own reasons... " She drifted off, her eyes glazing over and the Doctor coughed

"What happened?" He almost wished he hadn't asked, her features hardened and she closed off, but when she spoke again after glancing at her watch, Rose's voice was rough

"Last week I picked out a young man called Mike Abrems for my team, he had promise, if I could get that Torchwood 'all aliens should be shot first and interrogated later' theory out of his head … which took a grand total of two days... and then … three days ago..."

She met his eyes, and he blinked, frowning, questions clamouring onto his face and she smiled "There's a familiar curiosity..."

"You're eyes are green, what-?"

"I'll get to that" she replied, glancing at her watch again. 27 minutes. That's all she had. She didn't need the watch to know this, but she kept hoping the counter in her head was wrong.

"Four days ago was Marks first recon mission … single person shuttle had crashed, and it was a basic scope out the location and see what, if anything, we could salvage... It was a single Caxtarid, on her own, which didn't make much sense, she killed one of my men injured another before we... I took her down" she swallowed, not meeting the Doctors eyes again, knowing his abhorrence for guns.

"My team were checking the area and cataloguing anything they came across, I was trying to find out from the shuttle, why she was there on her own … and Mark threw something..." she heard him sigh, and could she hear him grit his teeth together? She was certain that hand she was watching from the corner of her eyes has just clenched into a fist

"Go on ..." he growled, prompting Rose to begin pacing the floor his Tardis, and the ship creaked comfortingly.

"Well, suffice to say … he blew up the shuttle, I don't remember much after that … I woke up two days ago, in Torchwood intensive care unit, severe injuries, I'd lost too much blood..." Rose was surprised to see tears in the Doctors eyes, and had to pause before she continued

"Two days ago, Doctor, I died... at 9.34pm" her hands twisted together, nerves, and she swallowed before continuing "and then, I regenerated"

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was vaguely aware that he'd taken a staggered step backwards. He was vaguely aware that his jaw was somewhere on the floor. He was vaguely aware that regeneration explained the unusual quirks in her personality, her differing features, and yet she was still very obviously Rose. He was also vaguely aware that the Tardis was purring … or more accurately laughing, and he frowned

"I guess we should both pay more attention to what she has to say" Rose murmured with a hand pressed to one of the ships columns

Not enough of his mind was working to process what she meant as he continued to stare at her "But that's not possible! You're not a Time Lord, you can't regenerate...!"

"I am the Bad Wolf, I create myself"

And those words finally stole his arguments. Every explanation he could come up with that would disregard what she'd said, any ability to disprove that she'd actually regenerated went out of the Tardis doors in that moment, because not even he knew how powerful the heart of the Tardis was, and if it could turn Blon the Slithveen back into an egg without guidance, if it could, under the control of a human girl, destroy a Dalek army and make someone immortal then why couldn't it give Rose the ability to regenerate? To stay travelling with him forever like she'd dreamed of? Asked for?

"You still have to go back, you have a life there …. Your family..."

"You still don't get it do yah?" she snapped, eyes sparking and he glared at her as she stalked over to his long brown coat and began dragging the pockets contents out over the floor of the Tardis despite his protests

Finally she threw the stethoscope at him and moved to his side, breathing heavily and still glaring, but he was stunned. Gods she was gorgeous.

"Well go on then! Scared of what you'll find?" snapped him out of his thoughts, and his glare returned.

If he'd been thinking straight, he'd have worked out that Rose wouldn't have done this if there was nothing to find, and he probably could have worked out what he was going to find already as well, but as it was, the Doctor wasn't thinking straight so when he pressed the medical instrument to Roses chest and heard the echoed beat of a double cardiovascular system his whole body froze in shock as he stared at her and watched her features soften.

"It didn't just change me …"

"It changed everything … the second respiratory system?"

Rose nodded

"Additional brain capacity? Multiple languages? Can you see the time lines?"

Rose had still been nodding but at last she froze and for the first time looked scared "Not yet"

The Doctor stared at her, a myriad of emotions floating across his face "How have you not burned?"

"John shared his memories with me" she whispered, her jaw tight "I didn't want to but..."

How long until your regeneration is completed?" he cut in, not wasting time with long explanations

"You believe me then?"

"I don't have much choice in the matter, I can't really argue against this much evidence can I? Now how long?"

Rose felt chilled right through. He didn't really trust her. Didn't really want her here. All he'd been trying to do since she arrived was to get her to leave, but she could see his frustration building behind those brown eyes that she remembered looking at her with absolute love and adoration and she blinked, glancing away from him "Twenty two minutes"

There was silent, but she kept her eyes on the central column of the Tardis

"Cutting it close aren't you?"

"Had to repair that Tardis I arrived in" she shot back

She could practically feel the questions he wanted to ask her hovering in the air. She was new, something different, something strange to explore. But she could also feel him reel himself in before he announced

"Come on" and moved deeper into the Tardis. For half a moment she'd expected him to take her hand, but he'd changed, so she followed silently.

**

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**

It was uncomfortable, but apparently it was because she was fighting it. Rose wasn't sure how she was fighting this. It was the only way to stop her mind from burning, and she was completely willing. How did she stop fighting it if she didn't know how she was fighting?

_'You're angry, now relax'_

Rose huffed and tried, once again, to calm down, relax into the sofa her and the Doctor were perched on and let him explore her mind freely. But there were some things that were private...

_'...tongue hot against her neck she couldn't stop the hiss passing through her mouth as he nipped lightly. A small part of her wished she'd never told him that point on her neck made her knees buckle, but it was a very small part...'_

Like that.

Her eyes were shut but the Doctor winced as the full force of her glare swam through every one of her thoughts while he was still connected to them

_'Stop fighting me, that's why all these memories are surfacing...'_

"Oh I've got one hell of a headache" she muttered softly, and she felt the Doctor tense and speed through her mind at a faster speed that she could follow. She suddenly felt sick too as she realised _why_ she was getting a headache.

They'd been at this from the moment Rose had 19 minutes left to the end of her regeneration, and as she felt something bloom like a flower made of fire at the base of her skull, and yet inside her mind causing her to hiss, Rose realised that this was it.

She spat curses in a language she didn't know. Moments later she knew it was Nestene, and knew that it wasn't something you shouldn't say in polite company.

She could feel the tension emanating from the Doctor when the knees of his crossed legs brushed hers as he leaned forwards from their mirrored position on the sofa and pressed his forehead against hers.

There were two paths this could take. The Doctor could find the section of her mind the time lines were emanating from and turn it off until her mind and body had learnt enough to cope with that information, or he couldn't and she burned.

She saw two options, one drawing closer, the other drifting away, and she clearly saw the end result of them both. She didn't know how to stop this ability unravelling through her thoughts, but she grabbed hold of the Doctors consciousness and dragged him deep within her mind.

He gasped and growled and fought back and cursed, panic set in … if he was joined to her when her mind went up in flames... But then he saw the deepest recess of her mind and why she'd dragged his thoughts there.

Right at the heart of her thought landscape, Roses' mind had chosen the shape of the inside of a Tardis, and the time lines were emerging from a hatch that usually held the ships heart. He couldn't stop the grin spreading over his face on either his physical or imagined body. This made things very simple, he didn't have to force her mind to construct something to hold the ability back, it was already here so he quite calmly strode over and shut the hatch, locking it with his own thoughts and swiftly leaving her tender and bruised mind.

When he opened his eyes the Doctor sighed softly as he watched her face soften into a healing sleep. He couldn't turn her away. He should, she still had her mum on that parallel world, and he really didn't want her to know what he'd become in her absence, but he had a feeling he'd shown her quite successfully already.

The other him, the clone, John Smith, had known. Had known that as a Time Lord the Doctor was the only one to send her too. Could he argue with himself? He usually did but this time he couldn't bring himself to.

Rose was back. She was back to stay. She was back inside his Tardis with the ability to stay with him forever...

His manic grin faded and he sighed. But she shouldn't. The things he had almost done since her departure...

The Doctor shut his eyes ashamed. How could he taint her with that?

He gently laid her out on the sofa, and placed a light blanket over her sleeping form before quietly leaving the room. At least he didn't have to worry about convincing her, as soon as she knew what he'd become, she'd leave without a fuss.

The Doctor didn't question why that made his hearts ache.

**

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**

Warm.

Far too warm.

Roses' eyes fluttered open and she threw the blanket off of her. John always put a bloody blanket on her when she fell asleep on the sofa, she'd lost count of the number of times she'd explained she slept on the sofa because the bed covers were too... hot...

Oh.

Not _her_ sofa.

Not _their_ flat.

Dead.

Tears filled her eyes and she snapped them shut much quicker than she'd opened them as the recent events flooded her mind. It took her a while but eventually she stood and stretched, staring down at her black suit and bullet proof vest she grimaced.

an urgent stop off at the Tardis' wardrobe was required she decided, glancing around her at the small cosy living room type room the Doctor had herded her into, what she assumed was, the previous day. But first, a shower.

She knew where her old room was, and it's attached bathroom was exactly as she'd left it. Rose didn't explore it for long, although it's untouched state confused her, she wanted to feel clean again and the shower was quickly put to good use.

It took Rose minutes, wrapped in a small towel, to raid her old room and decide that not only would nothing there fit her slightly curvier, slightly taller frame, but that she didn't want to put any of her 'old' clothes on either, so guided by the Tardis' gentle hums and guidance Rose eventually found her way into the multi story room that the Doctor used for a wardrobe. Wandering around she came across some hoodies she knew she'd left here from the first time she'd travelled with the Doctor and yet, like with her clothes from her old room, she wrinkled her nose at them without a second thought. She sighed as she gazed round the room.

"Guess that means I'll have to find out what I like now ..." she muttered, letting the sound move around the room to distract her from the seemingly huge task.

Despite the size of the Doctors wardrobe, or maybe because of it, it didn't take Rose half as long as she expected to pick out a caramel coloured jumper that hugged tightly to her waist, and cappuccino suede trousers with some light brown leather boots that looked as though they could go trough hell and back and not only be in one piece but still look stylish and it took her even less time to tug them on and study the ensemble in one of the many mirrors.

It felt comfortable, and yet...

"Try this..."

Rose jumped, but when she turned round The Doctor was merely holding out a leather coat. She took it with a soft thanks, unsure what to make of his sudden appearance, but she held the coat up and studied it, taking in it's dark green satin lining for a moment. It was longer than the 9th Doctors coat. It would reach her knees, and was obviously fitted for a woman.

Rose tugged it on and pulled at the leather belt it had around the waist for a moment before letting it drop, leaving the coat hanging open. Her reflection was frowning but she stopped and stared at the effect the flare of the coat had and a bright grin spread over her face meeting the Doctors eyes in the mirror "Fantastic, I love it"

He smiled at her as she turned round and offered her his hand. She hesitated only a moment, but it was a moment he spotted. For now he ignored it. He didn't know yet what had happened to his clone, but he understood she was still grieving. Besides, it wouldn't do for her to get attached to him, he didn't want to taint her, he would make her leave of her own choice this time so she wouldn't come back...

"Do you want breakfast?" Where did that come from? He wanted to glare at himself but that would look stupid, and her eyes were sparkling. He didn't want them to stop so he didn't glare.

"Lead the way" she announced

Against his better judgement, he did.

**

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**Song Listened To: bits and pieces but mainly … This Is Me – Skye Sweetnam**

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**A/N: If you want to see what I had in mind for Roses' new outfit, this is similair to what I had in my head;**

http (colon double slash) images2 (dot) fanpop (dot) com (slash) images (slash) photos (slash) 6300000 (slash) Billie-billie-piper-6392725-599-480 (dot) jpg

And if you head to my profile, I'm about to go and post a link to a trailer I made earlier this week for this Fanfiction. It's my first trailer, and I'm quite proud of it, but if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to let me know ^.^


	7. Landing Is Simply A Controlled Crash

_A/N: From here on out, I'm going to be using episodes from Season Five as plot points, but you guys have __**got**__ to trust me. I __**will**__ be changing certain events, and I __**promise**__ that I'm not __leading up to the same ending._

_Amy Pond __**will**__ make an appearance, being sort of key to at least the first "episode", I'll gloss over as much of the repetitive stuff as I can, and jazz up the bits that I can't gloss over to try and keep it fresh and interest__ing as well as having chapters in between "episode chapters" to help progress __**my**__ plot. Feel free to PM me if I start loosing that and need a good kick to remind me to adjust things more._

_If for some reason you haven't seen season five and don't want to have epic spoilers, then I strongly suggest you don't continue reading. Not even this chapter, as it contains spoilers for Episode 1 "The Eleventh Hour". If you leave my story because of this, I'm very sorry, and thank you profusely for staying with me this long. Send me a PM or a review and I'll write you a small consolation fic … or a music video if you'd prefer... . lemme know though :)

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**Landing Is Simply A Controlled Crash**

"_He who sees the calamity of other people finds his own calamity light" – Arabian Proverb_

If he didn't look over at the pilot's seat that Rose was asleep on, the Doctor could almost pretend that he was once again travelling alone. Except that the Tardis was practically humming with pleasure at having Rose back aboard and the Doctor glared at the control console as another trill of happiness exuded from the old ship and shivered through his mind, once again shattering the illusion he'd built and drawing his eyes unwillingly to Roses sleeping form sprawled across the only seat in the room.

Breakfast had been strange. The Doctor didn't want her there; that's what he was telling the warm spark that had started up in the far corner of his left heart anyway, and Rose was clearly not comfortable around him, if the few crumbs she'd picked at were anything to go by. During breakfast, the Doctor had seen her start to say something, pause, and stop herself more than once.

He moved his eyes back to the Tardis console and considered the multitude of buttons, levers and switches. He'd honestly lost count of how many times since she'd fallen asleep that he'd considered just dropping her off, unconscious, in the streets of London in the aftermath of the Dalek and Cybermen invasion to be accepted as a survivor or the attack, but she had two hearts now. One trip to A & E and Rose Tyler would end up in a science lab somewhere and that's the last thing he wanted.

He frowned at her sleeping form once again, crossing his arms as his mind raced through and discarded plans to get rid of her. She was so deeply asleep that he could hand her over to Torchwood. Leave her in Cardiff in Jacks capable hands before she even realised... As long as he was long gone before Jack could attempt to kill him that is... Yes, that plan could work...

The Doctor spun to the Tardis' controls quickly, before his conscience could kick in and he even managed to block out a disapproving groan from the Tardis as his hands flew over her various panels beginning to input the destination. Then another sound caught his attention and he froze.

Rose was shifting in her sleep and muttering. He stood and watched her as her nap became more and more restless and then, suddenly enough to make him jump, she sat bolt upright in the chair with a sharp cry of "No!"

Her strange green eyes skittered across her surroundings, landing on the doors of the Tardis, the tension in her body lessened but when her gaze reached the Doctors face her eyes flooded with tears. The Doctor moved without thought and was kneeling before her and gently cupping her cheek before his mind had caught up with him

"Oh Rose..."

The simple tender touch and soft voice snapped through Roses' walls and the tears began to fall as she threw herself out of the chair at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing. The Doctor glared as his body betrayed him and his own arms wrapped loosely around Roses' waist and soothingly rubbing her back as she sobbed.

Both Time Lords lost track of time but eventually Roses' tears subsided and she moved back to sit on the floor with her back resting against the pilots' seat and a blush staining her cheeks

"What happened, Rose?"

"To John?"

"Mmmm Hmmm" The Doctor nodded slowly. He'd spent the better part of breakfast considering and discarding various ways to bring up this topic, but he hadn't been able to come up with a plan that didn't result with her in tears. He didn't want to be the cause of that again. For now Rose seemed to have cried herself out and he'd taken the opportunity that her nightmare had presented. Then she sighed, and his resolve at merely garnering information from her wavered"

"I … I don't want to go into the details, Doctor" Rose started slowly, staring at her interlocked fingers resting lightly in her lap "My team... we were investigating the crash site of a single carrier Caxtarid shuttle and I was taking a look at the shuttles computer and navigational systems to see if I could find out why she'd been travelling alone..."

Roses' voice never wavered but her hands had a very fine tremble to them. The Doctor noticed. He'd also noticed that although Rose had said she didn't want to go into detail, she was doing an excellent job of skirting round answering his question.

"A new member of my team threw what he thought was debris, a piece of junk" Rose continued, "But it was the remote console controller..." She sensed the Doctor stiffen and paused for a moment, raising her eyes to his face. When the Doctor finally spoke it was simply "idiot … go on..." through his clenched teeth, and Rose found that strangely comforting

"Well ...the console exploded, and I woke up two days later in Torchwoods intensive care unit … Then I died, and regenerated" Rose finished quickly, swallowing and letting her eyes drift to the doors of the Tardis. In her distraction the Doctor shifted to sit more comfortably next to her.

"Torchwood had recovered an old, apparently broken, Tardis...Pete had hidden it from us, kept the paperwork out of my department... But with me changing … well mum told us about it and we set to work trying to fix her" Rose pulled her knees up to her chest and ran a still shaking hand through her new soft blonde hair "Next thing we know, there's a Caxtari ship declaring war unless we hand over the power source we have hidden"

"The Regeneration energy?" the Doctor interrupted, drawing a wry smile from her that didn't reach her eyes

"Presumably, that or the Tardis rebuilding" She skipped quickly through the Torchwood procedures and the set-up of troops around the storage facility and was well into describing her and Johns teams when her voice suddenly stopped, and when The Doctors turned to look at her again, her eyes were on the doors of the Tardis once more.

"The first wave used another crashing shuttle outside as a distraction and then got directly inside via a transmat beam... Didn't expect resistance and they were taken out before they really realised enough to fight back ..." Her voice was gaining distinct tremble and the Doctor found himself twining his fingers with hers gently

"He wasn't looking when the second wave came … He was saying … saying goodbye... to me" Rose murmured quietly, and as the Doctor watched the emotions flicker over her face and the tears well in her eyes again, he knew she was reliving the memories and tugged softly on their intertwined hands, drawing her attention

"He's in the dying Tardis that I arrived in" she added, her damp eyes turning to his soft brown ones once again "She gave him the honour of watching over him for the rest of time"

The Doctor was more than slightly shocked at the events leading up to his clones death, so when he eventually spoke, with the hand not entwined with Roses' rubbing at the back of his neck, it wasn't the most sensitive thing he could have said

"Weelll... That explains the screaming..."

**

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**

Amelia wasn't the religious type. She didn't see the point in praying to something about which there was no proof, much to her aunt's dismay however, tonight was different. Tonight she had decided that things had gone on long enough and tonight she had decided that she needed help. Moving hesitantly from her bedroom doorway to the side of her bed she knelt to the floor and pressed her hands together before hesitating and glancing to her left at the crack in her wall.

Amelia hated closing her eyes on that crack. The voices were scary and she didn't know if they'd eventually come out. But closing your eyes is the only way to pray and Amelia knew this so she steeled her nerves and slammed her brown eyes closed tightly

"Dear Santa, thanks for the dolls and pencils and the other things you gave me" she started, her voice soft as she worried over the now unwatched crack to her left "It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you … but honest, it is an emergency."

Amelia paused and sighed, she watched to crack an eye open to check that nothing was happening at the crack because the voices had started again, but she didn't. She simply shivered and continued

"There's a crack in my wall... Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack but... I know it's not... because … well, because at night there's voices … so please, _please_ could you send someone to fix it? A policeman, or... or someone who knows things about cracks?"

A sudden crash came from behind her and she frowned, pausing her monologue. A couple more crashes could be hear but not as loud as the first, these sounded like flowerpots falling over and then a sharp hissing sound reached Amelia's ears and her eyes flew open, as she stared over her shoulder at her bedroom window.

She considered the window for a moment. She didn't really want to interrupt her prayer to Santa, her request was a serious one, but then … maybe that noise was Santa's response? Making her decision, she faced her pressed together hands and shut her eyes again just long enough to mutter "Back in a moment" and dart to her bedroom window.

Out on the lawn, or more accurately lying where her shed used to be, was a large blue box. As she peered down, Amelia could make out some words and the side and frowning as she peered down at it a grin finally lit her face as she made out the word 'Police'.

"Thank you, Santa"

It took the young girl moments to tug on her wellies and rush downstairs, grabbing a flash light from one of the draws as she went through the kitchen. Running down the garden path Amelia slowed quickly, staring that the blue box as one of the sides opened and a hook appeared over the edge. Her excitement cooled quickly.

Santa hadn't been the only one listening to her pray, the crack in the wall had been listening too... maybe this box wasn't from Santa at all... but Amelia hated hiding from anything, she held the torch tightly and waited to see who or what would emerge from the strange blue box, that had 'Police' written on it, and was now lying on her demolished garden shed.

**

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**

"Screaming?" Rose asked, puzzled, "What scream-IINNGG!" Suddenly the Tardis' console exploding with lights and sparks and the two Time Lords were sent scattering across the floor of her console room as she began careening around like an unstable roller coaster

The Doctor managed to get back on his feet and cling to the console, dodging random sparks and pressing buttons seemingly at random "What?"

"What's wrong with her Doctor!" Rose shouted over the blaring alarms as she clung to one of the ships support columns

"I don't know! Something's knocked us out of the vortex! She's crashing!" He looked confused and furious at the same time, and if the circumstances had been different Rose would have found the expression on his face highly amusing.

The Tardis doors flung themselves open revealing that they were being shot across the skies of London as more alarms began blaring and when the Doctor turned to stare around the Tardis, a hint of fear entering his eyes, the console section he was clinging too exploded, forcing him to let go and step backwards.

"Doctor!" Rose yelled, still hanging onto the support column she watched as the jolting journey flung the Doctor out of the Tardis' open doors. He caught hold of the edge of the ship with one hand on his way past, halting his descent but he felt his blood freeze as he stared at the rapidly approaching spire of Big Ben.

"Flip the _temporal regulator_!" he yelled into the Tardis without thinking, then he cringed. Why had he done that? Rose wouldn't know what the hell he was talking about. The Doctor tried to ignore the approaching clock and drag himself back inside his out of control ship.

He managed to pull his chest inside the Tardis and cling to the grating while one hand fished in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver when he finally noticed that Rose was now hanging onto the still sparking console. He watched with wide eyes as she flipped the temporal regulator first try, and then continued to carefully move round the console, pressing buttons that hadn't occurred to him yet.

Rose managed to halt the ship's head over heels flight path and level her out just in time, but the Doctor still had to swing his body closer to the ship to avoid serious injury from the clock's spire. With Rose keeping the Tardis steady he managed to climb back inside and force the doors shut before collapsing against them when a sigh and a grin.

Rose looked tousled, but like it had been planned. His suit was ripped beyond repair. Rose grinned at him, and he grinned back manically, and that was all the distraction it took for the Tardis to loose control once again and fling the two Time Lords into her depths.

**

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**

"A swimming pool?"

"Yup"

"In the library?"

"uh … yup?"

"Why do you have a swimming pool in the library?"

Amelia had been listening to the conversation bounce back and forth for a few minutes, ever since a set of doors had opened on the blue box and a hook latched itself onto the edge. The conversation had started off strange and gotten worse, but she only realised she was grinning when a small pair of hands gripped the box tightly either side of the hook and the return of her nerves meant that she quickly felt the grin slide off her face.

She watched as a blonde woman dragged herself carefully out of a space that was half her height with apparent difficulty and placed booted feet just as carefully onto the slippery mud

"Weelll … I suppose you could..." came from the box but the blonde woman sighed and turned back to the opening without noticing Amelia

"It's not like you can read books in a pool"

She leant into the box and dragged a tall man with brown hair and a soaking wet suit out by the arm. Unlike the blonde, the man simply let himself fall over the edge of the box and onto the mud with a sigh of his own "Ohhh, I don't know … some of your books would be better off in the water..."

"Are you all right?" Amelia cut in nervously, recognising the blondes' hands on her hips as a sign that the discussion could quickly turn into an argument. They both jumped, and stared at her for a second, before the man in the ragged suit stood up and grinned

"Hello! Yes! We're fine … just fine, bit of a fall … down there … to the library... long climb back up, but I'm fine, we're… fine ..."

Amelia's brown eyes watched the blonde woman fold her arms and bite her lip as though she was trying not to laugh, before she flicked her eyes back to the man's warm face

"But you're soaking wet"

"I was in the swimming pool" he answered defensivly with a small frown and his hands in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels

"You _said_ you were in the library..."

"So was the swimming pool..."

Amelia frowned at him "Why was the swimming pool in the library?"

"That's what I said!" the blonde announced, throwing her hands in the air and shifting her weight restlessly

"Weelll … I mean … I suppose you could-"

"Are you policemen?"

The man in the suit practically leapt at the topic change and turned from glaring at the blonde to staring at Amelia

"Why? Did you call the police?"

Amelia hesitated for a moment, but they hadn't tried to hurt her, they were just acting a bit strange... so the voices hadn't sent them. Were they too strange to have come from Santa though? Maybe … although she supposed anyone from the North Pole would seem strange to her

"Have you come about the crack in my wall?" she finally asked, making a decision to trust them. The man started towards her, a puzzled frown on his sharp features

"What cra-ARGG!"

"You all right, mister?" Amelia asked, but the blonde just laughed as he held up the piece of debris from the destroyed garden that he'd managed to trip over

"I'm fine … Just fine..." he muttered, throwing the broken piece of something over his shoulder carelessly

"Does it scare you?"

Amelia turned her gaze on the blonde woman and frowned, "No … Not really, he's just a bit weird..."

She paused when the blonde started chuckling softly and the man rose to his knees before her

"Not me... she means the crack in your wall, does it scare you?"

The small girl froze and she saw the man's eyes harden and darken, and the woman's laughter quickly ceased before she finally whispered

"Yes"

"Well then! No time to loose!" The blonde helped him to his feet in the slippery mud before he continued with a manic grin "I'm the Doctor, this is Rose... Do everything we tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off" he held out his hand for her to take and Amelia frowned at it, raising her eyes to his sparkling ones

"If you're the Doctor, why does you box say 'Police' on it?"

The Doctor merely took her hand before starting towards the house without replying as Rose laughed and announced

"I like this girl!"

**

* * *

**

"Apples" Rose announced, a surprised tone to her voice and the Doctor and Amelia stopped to look at her from the foot of the stairs. She didn't know why the sight of the bright red fruit sitting in a bowl on the kitchen table had made her pause, but she was suddenly and inexplicably hungry.

"Do you mind if I have an apple?" she asked Amelia softly, barely waiting for the girls puzzled "No..." before moving to the kitchen table and seizing the fruit. The other two moved to the kitchen doorway but as Rose was about to take a bite she spotted a familiar amused expression on the Doctors face and paused

"What?"

"Have you had an apple since... well recently?"

Rose frowned, glancing at the fruit in her hand suspiciously "No … but I'm hungry and it looks delicious..."

The Doctor merely grinned at her as she glared and took a defiant bite from the fruit and froze. Despite himself, the Doctor found he was enjoying Roses' journey of discovery and struggle not to simply spit the apple across the room.

When the blonde managed to get rid of the fruit as politely as possible she shuddered and poured herself a glass of milk, promptly spitting it into the kitchen sink

"Oh my god, that's disgusting!... It's gone bad, it's awful! Urg!" She shuddered, glaring at the Doctors laughter

"It was only delivered this morning" Amelia told her slowly,

Rose stared at the gil before shaking her head and focussing a glare on the Doctor "It's not funny you know! I've hardly eaten for two days"

Still chuckling to himself and leaving the bewildered Amelia by the door, unsure what to make of the two lunatics in her home, he moved to Roses' side and gently steered her to sit at the kitchen table.

"Allow me, I'm certain that you'll never come up with what you actually want to eat on your own" he told her, his laughter still clear in his voice.

Rose huffed, but was too pleased by the return of his usual banter to be truly irritated

"What do you mean?" she conceded, smiling as Amelia sat down in the chair across from her

"Trust me, it will be something you would normally consider disgusting … like your mums tea..."

"Oi!"

The Doctor chuckled again, and began rummaging through the cupboards without permission only partially taking note of the conversation Rose had started with the girl.

"So, what's your name then?"

"Amelia, Amelia Pond"

"That's a great name!" The Doctor called out as he found what he'd been looking for in the fridge "very fairy tale!" He could practically feel Roses' grin and had to smother a sigh because it wouldn't be _her_ grin in that new face of hers – Rassilon, he was such a hypocrite!

"We in Scotland then, Amelia?"

"No … We had to move to England, it's rubbish here"

The Doctor scowled and sunk into his thoughts. He shouldn't be having this much fun, he shouldn't be getting this attached to her again, and he shouldn't feel his resolve to drop her off with Jack crumbling slightly every time she made him laugh against his will so he tried to ignore their conversation. And failed.

"What about your parents? Thought they'd have been down here screaming at strangers in their kitchen by now" The Doctor heard Rose question softly as he fried up a couple of sausages

"Don't have a mum and dad, just an Aunt" Her soft response caused the Doctor to freeze for a moment but he knew Rose had noticed

"Where's your Aunt then?"

"Out" the whizzing of the blender paused their conversation till the Doctor placed a bowl of ice cream on the table and ordered Rose to start eating

"She left you on your own?" he added, frowning a little, but the girl merely glared at him

"I'm not scared!"

"Course you're not!" he announced, grinning at her "Big blue Box falls out of sky, strangers fall out of box, girl eats sausage ice cream, and look at you!" he paused as Rose dropped her spoon into the bowl she'd been rapidly finishing

"You're kidding..." she asked but he merely grinned wider and ignored her, continuing to give Amelia his speech

"You're just sitting there... so you know what I think?"

"What?"

"Must be one hell of a crack in your wall"

**

* * *

**

They entered Amelia's bedroom slowly, cautiously creaking the door open as though something might jump out of the girls' wardrobe at them without warning. Rose shivered and the Doctors eyes met hers, questioning

"What is that? Feels like something's crawling over my skin..."

What she didn't expect him to do was to grin manically and bound into the room, sonic screwdriver aglow.

"That, Rose Tyler, is residual spacial energy... oohhh you've had some cowboys in here Amelia..." he paused before glancing over his shoulder at them "weelll... not _actual_ cowboys... although..." he turned back to the crack and began flipping through settings as Rose heard him add, "wouldn't rule it out"

The buzz of the sonic screwdriver was all that could be heard for a moment, but then Rose moved closer to the Doctor, stopping near the middle of the room

"Residual spacial energy? What's that when it's at hom-"

"I used to hate apples"

Both travellers turned to face the strangely calm Scottish girl standing in the bedroom doorway holding an apple. She approached Rose, and the Doctor watched silently as she sunk to her knees to be on Amelia's level.

"Then my mum put faces on them" Amelia handed Rose a carefully carved apple and the Doctor froze, his eyes widening because there was _that_ smile. The one he'd convinced himself wouldn't still be a part of this new Rose... The tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth teasingly as she grinned widely at the apple

"She sounds great, your mum … I'll keep this for later, that all right?"

Amelia nodded, a soft smile on her face, and Rose slipped the apple into her coat pocket as she returned to her feet, grabbing the girls hand and the Doctor had a sudden flash of irrational jealously that he resolutely squashed.

"This wall is solid and the crack doesn't go all the way through," he announced, turning away from the two women, "So where is that draft coming from?" He fell silent, still running his sonic screwdriver over the crack and staring at the readings with a frown

"Doctor?" Rose called softly, breaking into his thoughts

"You know what the crack is?" he asked, eyebrows raised as he ignored her questioning tone

"No..."

"What?"

The Doctor grinned feeling much more like himself. Neither knew what was going on and he readied himself to launch into a simplified lecture to present to the two humans. Of course Rose was still human, why had he started to doubt it? The screaming at the back of his mind was merely his own thoughts, as it had always been and although the vortex had healed Rose and changed her slightly, given her a second set or organs, that didn't make her a Time Lord. She was still, fundamentally, only human.

"It's a crack, but I'll tell you something … weelll, father fascinating... If you knocked down this wall, the crack would stay there, because-"

"The crack isn't in the wall!" Rose finished, her eyes wide in realization, not noticing the Doctors glare

"Where is it then?" Amelia asked the, darting her dark brown eyes between the two

"Everywhere" he answered, his glare melted but he spun back to the wall considering it with a serious stare and running curious fingers along the crack "It's everything, it's a split in the skin of the world, two parts of space and time that should never have touched pressed together … right here in the wall of your bedroom" There was silence behind him. Stunned silence, and he relished it, coveted it … he was, in every way, their superior.

"Can you hear...?" Rose whispered, and the Doctor frowned again

Amelia nodded slowly, "A voice? Yes"

His frown deepened and he glanced round the bedroom before stalking past the two women, causing Rose to tug Amelia out of his path and begin to form a glare of her own. He ignored her, scooping up a glass of water from the bedside table and throwing the liquid contents hazardously over his shoulder before moving swiftly back to the crack.

He could feel Roses' eyes on him but continued to ignore her as he pressed the glass firmly between the wall and his ear

"_**Prisoner Zero Has Escaped"**_

"Prisoner Zero...?"

"Prisoner Zero has escaped" Amelia completed, drawing the Doctors gaze "That's what I heard"

"What does it mean, Doctor?" the trust on Roses' face was hesitant and tinged with wariness but it was enough for the Doctor to cling to

"Prisoner Zero has escaped... it means that on the other side of this wall there's a prison and it seems that they've lost a prisoner"

"I meant besides the obvious..."

"Do you know what that means, Amelia?" he continued, ignoring Roses' waspish comment

"What?"

"You need a better wall..." the Doctor darted forward, moving the chest of draws from in front of the wall with ease, before continuing

"The only way to close the breach is to open it all the way, the forces will invert and it'll snap itself shut … weelll...should do … umm..." The Doctor froze and Amelia frowned at him

"What?"

The Doctor locked eyes with Rose for a moment before she sighed and turned to Amelia,

"You know when grown ups tell you that 'every thing is going to be fine'..." she paused to grin as Amelia rolled her eyes "and you know that they're probably lying just to make you feel better?"

"Yeah ..."

Rose sighed and gave her a tight smile "Everything's gonna be fine" she repeated, before scooping Amelia up into her arms and letting the young girl cling to her neck. The Doctor gave her a small grin and placing himself between Rose holding Amelia, and the wall before pointing his sonic screwdriver at the crack

"Allon-sy!"

The crack widened and although Amelia was leaning round the Doctor curiously, Rose could still feel the tension in the girls small body and the jump when a giant eyeball appeared at the now gaping chasm in response to the Doctors calls of "hello?"

Something blue and glowing suddenly shot out of the split and Roses' Torchwood training kicked in causing her to drop to the floor without thought, keeping Amelia shielded carefully, but the Doctor staggered sideways as it hit his hip. Quite suddenly the chasm on Amelia's bedroom wall snapped shut.

"There we are, good as new, I told you it would close"

"What was that thing? Was that prisoner Zero?" Amelia questioned as Rose uncurled herself and set the girl back on her own feet again while the Doctor hummed, rocking back on his heels

"You all right?" Rose added, worry written all over her face, but the Doctor just grinned

"That wasn't Prisoner Zero, I think that was prisoner Zero's guard actually" He started patting down his jacket, looking for something, before he continued "I'm fine Rose, great and whatever it was, it left me a message..." he waved the paper at Rose and grinned excitedly before adding for Amelia's sake, "Psychic paper, takes a lovely little message..."

"_**Prisoner Zero Has Escaped"**_

Rose sighed and folded her arms, "don't have a huge variety of topics they want to discuss, do they?" she asked sarcastically, earning herself a raised eyebrow "But why tell us? Unless..."

"Unless what?" Amelia interrupted again as Roses' eyes travelled over her room

"Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here..."

"But he couldn't have" The Doctor cut in, frowning again "We'd know" he ran out of the room and into the hall before pausing and sighing, not even glancing at the two women as they followed him "But there is something... something I'm missing" he dragged a hand through his hair and turned in a circle before suddenly stopping "... in the corner … of my eye..."

_***CLANG***_

"Is that … a bell?" Rose asked, frowning. The Doctors eyes widened and shot to hers as she suddenly felt a chill travel the length of her spine as some of Johns memories surfaced in her mind.

_***CLANG***_

"NO! No, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor sprinted down the stairs taking two at a time with Rose and Amelia right on his heels, he flew through the kitchen and out the back door yelling as he went

"The engines are phasing!... I've got to get in there!... Her neuron capacitors will ignite the system central control!"

"That bad then?" Rose called, her thoughts partially understood what he was saying, but she didn't have time to process the information and make sense of it

"She'll burn!" The Doctor threw over his shoulder at her as they raced down the garden path

"It's just a box!" Amelia gasped, breathless from the mad dash to the garden, "How can a box have engines?"

"It's not a box, Amelia, it's a time machine" Rose explained as the Doctor threaded rope through the Tardis door handles

"A real one?"

Rose nodded and the girl stared at her before flicking her eyes back to the Doctor "You've got a real time machine?"

"Not for much longer if I can't get her stabilised!" the Doctor announced "Five minute hop into the future should do it"

"Can I come?"

Rose and the Doctor both turned their eyes on her for a moment but the Doctor just grinned and went back to tying the rope securely "Not safe in here … not yet... five minutes, give us five minutes and we'll be right back... in you go Rose"

Rose lifted herself onto the edge of the Tardis and was about to drop back inside with a grimace when Amelia's small voice stopped her

"People always say that"

The Doctor moved to stand in front of her and bent to meet her eyes with an expression Rose knew would be soft and firm and completely reassuring, despite his panic

"People?" he asked her in a near whisper, "Really Amelia, do I sound like people? Act like 'people'? Do I even... even _look_ like people? Trust me …" he grinned "I'm the Doctor"

The moment Amelia smiled, he was leaping into action again, bouncing over to the Tardis and unceremoniously pushing Rose into the waiting ship before diving in himself, using the rope to slam the doors shut.

The Tardis dematerialised and Amelia Pond raced back inside her empty house to pack a suitcase, for once deliriously happy.

**

* * *

**

Are you sure that's right?" Rose asked, clinging to the console for all she was worth.

Somehow she'd managed to survive their re-entry into the Tardis with barely a scratch across her cheek and a few bruises, but the Doctor, true to form, had managed to his a couple of walls on the way down and his suit jacket, at least, was ruined beyond repair. He'd actually pulled it off and left it on the pilots seat and was now spinning round the control console frantically in his pinstripe trousers which had survived with only a few tears and damp blue shirt. She hoped, in passing, that the Tardis had a few spare suits lying around

"Of course I'm sure!"

"It looks like you've gone a bit far!"

"I know what I'm doing Rose!"

The console room was beginning to fill with smoke and Rose covered her mouth with one edge of her coat

"Oh...!"

"What-" she had to pause to cough and couldn't understand why the Doctor seemed to be having no trouble breathing "What now?"

"I know what I was missing! Oh I'm so stupid! We need to get Amelia out of there..."

With a tremble, the Tardis managed to land and the Doctor was flying out of the doors screaming for Amelia before Rose had even released her death grip on the old ships console. With a sigh, and a soft stroke along the ships side, Rose followed the Doctor at a slower pace, pausing in the garden for a moment to catch her breath after the smoke filled confines of the Tardis.

She could still hear the Doctor shouting something about Prisoner Zero as she slowly began moving into the familiar kitchen. They were late of course, when weren't they? He'd promised Amelia five minutes … It was daylight, so at least a couple of hours had passed.

The Doctors shouting suddenly ceased and Rose froze halfway across the kitchen, listening. If something had managed to shut the Doctor up, it was usually something bad. She began moving up the stairs and onto the landing she remembered Amelia's room being on. Her green eyes drifted over the unconscious form of the Doctor and turning on the spot to give her own shout for Amelia, Rose found her head connecting with a cricket bat.

'_That's a strange weapon for an alien_' passed through her head, before her world went black.

**

* * *

**

"Bat... bicket... bricket crat... Cricket Bat...!" He blinked slowly at the red head standing over him and frowned "Cricket bat... I'm seeing cricket bat, why?"

"Male and female, both mid to late twenties, I have them restrained, send me some backup please, dispatch"

"Cricket bat?"

"Oi, you, shut it" the woman glared at him, dropping her hand from her radio

"You hit me with a cricket bat!"

"You were breaking and entering!"

The Doctor stared at her for a moment before darting forward in an attempt to stand, only to find himself brought up short at the wrist and forced to collapse back against the cold radiator with a huff.

Looking down he spotted the handcuffs wrapped round the radiator, and a still unconscious Rose attached to the other end of them.

"Oh not handcuffs... not again … it never ends well... What have you done to Rose?"

"Same thing I did to you... do you want to sit still now? I've got back-up on the way..."

"You...! … cricket bat? … hang on … wait … no, hand cuffs?" the Doctor stared at her hard again, spotted the black and white hat, and his gaze quickly raked over the rest of what she was wearing, before his eyes widened "You're the police!"

"And you're breaking and entering, you see how this works?" she raised her eyebrows at him, and crossed her arms, her clipped English accent clearly conveying how clearly unimpressed she was.

"Where's … Where's Amelia..." Rose muttered, then groaned "Is she all right? Gods I hope she feels better than I do..."

"Rose! You're awake!" The Doctor tuned from the policewoman to grin at her, deciding to ignore the wave of relief that washed over him, but Rose winced his grin faded slightly

"Yeah ... got a bit of a headache Doctor … D'yah wanna keep the noise down a bit?" As the blonde sat up, the Doctor merely rolled his eyes, noticing quickly that the police officer seemed to have frozen

"Amelia Pond?" she asked, her eyes wide

"Yeah... Scottish girl, maybe seven or so, where is she?" Rose asked again, sitting up slowly "This one here promised five minutes but-"

"The engines were phasing!" Her watched Rose wince and paused, lowering his voice a bit "I suppose I might have gone a bit far ..." He ignored Roses' glare in favour of watching the expressions of shock and something else he couldn't place flitter through the policewoman's eyes "Has something happened to her?"

"Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a long time" the woman breathed and the two people handcuffed to the radiator froze, much like she had, and stared at her

"How long...?" The Doctor asked

"Six months"

"Damn it! I told you that you'd gone too far!" Rose hissed, worry was dominant on her features rather than anger, but the Doctor was just shaking his head

"No … no, I can't be six months late, I said five minutes … I promised her five minutes...!"

The policewoman stood straighter, and moved down the hall a little bit, moving her hand to her radio again to ask dispatch to hurry up the backup, "These two know something about Amelia Pond..."

"Where is she!"

"What happened to her? What happened to Amelia Pond!"

She ignored their shouted questions until Rose slammed her hand into the floor, making the man she was cuffed to jump in surprise along with the police officer.

"Damn it Doctor! Next time, you promise five minutes, I'm flying!" Rose hissed, pulling a dark frown onto his face before he turned to where the policewoman was leaning again the banister to the stairs

"I need to speak to whoever lives in this house right now" the Doctor demanded, his voice darker and his tone tinted with anger after Roses' frustrated outburst, but the policewoman didn't seem intimidated in the slightest

"I live here"

"But you're the police!"

"Yes, and this is where I live here, got a problem with that!"

The Doctor groaned, before fixing her with a sharp stare "How many rooms?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"On this floor, how many rooms? Count them for me now..."

The police woman flicked her eyes to the blonde, Rose, but she was revealing nothing, her frustrated glare was focussed on the ceiling where she was resting her head on the radiator and seemingly not paying attention to the conversation going on around her.

"Five" the police officer pushed herself off from the banister and stood before them, her finger flicking around behind her as she listed off the placement of the rooms "One, two, three, four, five..."

"Six"

"Six?"

"What are you up to?" Rose asked, lifting her head frown at him

"Look..."

"Look where?" the officer cut in, not understanding where he'd gotten 'six' from

"Exactly where you don't want to look, where you never want to look, the corner of your eye" he nodded his head at her, but his eyes were focussed over her shoulder "look behind you..."

The Doctor and Rose both watched as the officer turned, ever so slowly, on the spot, her eyes wide, but only the Doctor noticed when she gasped

"That … that is just not possible..."

"What can she see Doctor?" Rose asked softly, and he frowned

"The door … at the end of the hallway there, can't you see it?"

"How is that possible?" Amelia asked over her shoulder but neither of them answered her

"Of course I can see it but that's nothing new, it was here last time ..." Rose told him causing the Doctor to frown again and glance between her and the confused officer

"There's a perception filter around the door... I sensed it last time I was here, should have seen it" he paused and then added to Rose, " ...are you telling me you could see it last time?"

She nodded, slowly, still wary of the pain in her head from the cricket bat "Yeah... I mean, if I'd known it was important, I'd have mentioned it, but it just looked like any other door in the hallway..."

"But that's a whole room. That's a whole room, in my house, that I never even noticed..."

The Doctor sighed at the woman's babbled interruption again and when he spoke, his tone was more than slightly impatient. He was late, Amelia was missing, Rose keep doing and saying things to disprove his theory on the time vortex merely changing her enough to heal and he wasn't in the best of moods at being handcuffed to a radiator.

"The filter stops you noticing! Something came here a while back... to hid and it's still hiding and you... you _need_ to uncuff me now!" he finished in a shout as the officer started moving

The stupid human began advancing on the door with a softly muttered "I can't, I lost the key"

That caught Roses' attention and she stared at the slowly retreating officer "How can you have _lost_ it!"

"Stay away from that door!" The Doctor added when the woman didn't show any signs of stopping

"Do not **touch** that door...!" He grit his teeth together when the woman continued to ignore him and didn't even notice as Rose nervously slipped her handcuffed hand into his

"Do not open that...!...grrr!" the police officer disappeared round the corner of the door and he stared at the end of the hall, running his free hand through his hair and making it stand on end

"Why does no one ever listen? Do I just have a face no one listens to?" he asked Rose, not waiting for a response before he began digging through his trouser pockets

"My screwdriver … where is it?" he muttered and Rose sat up further, watching him

"You haven't lost it have you?"

He glared, and raised his voice a bit "Silver thing, blue at the end... where did it go?"

"There's nothing here..." emerged from the room, the woman's voice soft, and the Doctor ran his hand through his hair again, partly in frustration and partly in relief that she was still alive

"Whatever's in there stopped you seeing the whole room, what makes you think it'll let you see it? Please, just … listen to the Doctor, get _out_ of there!" Rose called back

There was silence for a heartbeat or four before the voice came back "Silver, blue at the end?"

"Yeah … my screwdriver, yes..."

"It's here"

Although his voice sounded the same, Rose could feel the sudden tension in the Doctor, and the worried glint enter his eyes and his hand tightened on hers

"... must have rolled under the door..."

"Yeah" the officer called back "must have... an' then it must have jumped up on the table all by itself"

The Doctor and Rose both began yelling for the woman to move, run, get out of the room, but when she didn't immediately appear, their voices trailed off

"What is it? What's happening? What are you doing? What's going on?" the Doctor yelled suddenly frantic, and tugging restlessly on the handcuffs without releasing Roses' hand

"There's nothing here … and yet ..."

"Corner of your eye., remember?" Rose called through, a frown marring her face as she strained to hear any sound in the other room

"What is it?"

"Don't try to see it! If it knows you seen it, it will kill you" The Doctor added, also listening for any sound. The woman didn't reply and he had a strange unwelcome feeling of worry come over him "Don't look at it … do … not … look..."

He cursed in a strange language that Rose almost grasped at when the officer screamed, but it escaped her when he reverted to English

"Get out!" but the woman was already out of the room, and slamming the door shut behind her, moving quickly to stand beside them and handing the Doctor his sonic screwdriver at his sharp "Give me that!"

The Doctor frowned as the screwdriver kept failing, he smacked it his leg a couple of times before managing to lock the door at the other end of the hall

"What's wrong? What's it done to it?" Rose asked, strangely concerned for the small device

"Don't know" he muttered, before the officer's suddenly shrill voice interrupted them

"Will that door hold it?"

"Oh yeah! Yeah, of course it will! It's an inter-dimensional multi-form from outer-space, they're all _terrified_ of wood!" he snapped, glaring at her "and _you_ had to go an antagonise it!"

"Doctor... what's it doing?" Rose asked softly, nudging the Doctor with an elbow to gain his attention, and save the unsuspecting girl from his rage. The door had a low yellow glow around it and Rose was staring at it as though if she kept watching it would vanish as a figment of her imagination.

Not that redirecting his rage did her any good.

"I don't know, getting dressed?" he snapped before turning back to the terrified officer and sighed "Go on... Run, just go, your back-up's coming and we'll be fine"

"There is no back-up" she muttered, drawing their gazes from the glowing doorway

"I heard you, on the radio" The Doctor stated, staring at her confused, "You... you called for back-up"

"It's a pretend radio" her brown eyes flashed to the two people handcuffed to the floor and she bit her lip

"But you're a police woman!" The Doctor exclaimed and Rose sighed, shutting her green eyes

"No she's not" she muttered, everything finally clicking into place "It's a costume like for Halloween or..."

"I'm a kissogram!" she yelled, pulling the costume hat from her head and releasing a cascade of flame red hair that had Rose frowning as something niggled at the back of her mind

Suddenly the door to the spare room burst open and Rose and the red head both jumped.

"But … it's just..." The red head started as all three of them stared at a middle aged man in blue overalls with the biggest Rottwieler Rose had ever laid eyes on, snarling and barely being held back by a thin chain lead

"That dog … is ..."

"No it's not, look at the faces" The Doctors calm and slightly intrigued voice had the two women relaxing, prepared to follow his instructions.

Although the dog was snarling, and slowly terrifying Rose again, when she moved her eyes away from the dog, the man's features she realised were actually the ones in time with the snarls. She glanced back at the dog, and it merely sat there. She glanced back at the man and he barked, making her and the pretend-police officer jump again

"What? I'm sorry, but what?" the red head burst out, frowning and glancing between the multi-form and her two captives.

"It's all one creature" The Doctor explained, a grin forming and Rose groaned as she recognised a familiar glint in his brown eyes

"What? It's one creature disguised as two, how did that earn a groan?" he asked her, surprised

"You're fascinated by it!"

"Well … yes, clever old multi-form" he told her defensively, turning his eyes back to the creature "A bit of a rush job though... got the voice a bit muddled did you?"

"And here comes the speech" Rose muttered, but the woman didn't hear her, and although the Doctor sent her another strange glance, he chose to ignore the comment

"Mind you … where did you get that pattern? You'd need a psychic link... a live feed … how did you get that?" the man-dog creature started approaching, snarling and the Doctor's free hand flew into the air before him, palm out and open

"No! No, stay boy! We're safe!" The creature froze, but the Doctor didn't stop " Me, her and her … we're safe … and do you know why?" he grinned and nodded at the red head "She called for backup"

"I didn't call for backup!"

Rose sighed and shut her eyes, and the Doctor's face lost it's grin, but he didn't take his eyes from the creature

"Yes … I know … that was me being clever and trying to save our lives" he muttered before jumping right back in to his monologue to the multi-form

"Right! Yes, so _no _backup... and that's why you don't need to kill us... alone, we're no threat to you, if we had back-up, then you'd have to kill us"

"Doctor..." Rose started, knowing better than to tempt fate with him around, but it was already too late

"**Attention, Prisoner Zero**

**The Human Residence is surrounded**

**Attention, Prisoner Zero**

**The Human Residence is surrounded"**

"What's that?" the kissogram asked them nervously and Rose sighed

"That's the sound of his luck knocking"

The Doctor glared, but Rose was staring at the multi-form as it stood, listening, but not growling.

"Weelll.. that would be probably be the back-up..." he muttered, returning his own attention to the multi-form "ok .. one more time!... We _**do**_ have back-up … and that's definitely why we're safe"

"**Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence**

**Or the human residence will be incinerated"**

"Oh god..." Rose announced softly, shaking her head. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry

"Weell, ok … Safe apart from … you know" The Doctor paused and glanced to the two women on either side of him, staring at him "... incineration"

During the Doctor's speech, the multi-form had turned and was now slowly moving into one of the other rooms. The Doctor watched it go and smashed the sonic screwdriver into the floor a couple more times before managing to unlock the hand cuffs

"Run..." he half whispered, ushering the two women past the doorway Prisoner Zero had gone through before following them down the stairs two at a time. Funnily enough, this time, neither of them argued with him, and both did exactly as he said.

**

* * *

**

As they flew out of the kitchen door into the back garden, the Doctor over took the red head "kissogram?"

"Yes!" she answered, a note of panic highlighting her tone

"Why did you pretend to be a police officer?" Rose asked as they followed the Doctor through the garden

"You broke into my house! It was this or a French maid" she practically shrieked "Now what's going on? Tell me!"

Rose remained silent and glanced at the Doctor, so the red head rounded on him next "Tell me!"

"An alien convict is hiding in room in your house, which it also hid, it's now disguised as a man with a dog, and some other aliens are about to incinerate your house, any not-stupid questions?" The Doctor reeled off causally as he led them to the Tardis, already pulling out his key

"Yes"

"Good, me too"

Rose sighed, and was about to reprimand him for being rude, again, when he suddenly began yelling and leant his head against the door of the Tardis

"No! Don't do that! Not now!"

"What's wrong?" Rose asked, brushing her own hand against the blue box

"She took too much damage, she's still rebuilding, not letting us in" he sighed and spun on the spot, eyes dancing across their faces, thinking but suddenly the red head grabbed hold of his hand and began pulling

"Come on!"

"Doctor..." Rose called, stopping the both of them from leaving as she stared at the garden shed "You destroyed that shed last time..."

He pulled away from the kissogram and approached the shed, a puzzled frown already in place "Yes … smashed it to pieces... you're right, Rose"

"So, there's a new one! Let's go!" the other woman gasped at them, glancing at their serious faces

"But the new one's gotten old … ten years old at least!" The Doctor exclaimed, brushing his finger over the wood and licking it, missing the looks of disgust that passed over both women's faces as he continued with a shocked "Twelve years! We're not six months late, we're twelve _years_ late!

The woman swallowed, and glanced over her shoulder "He's coming..."

"You said six months" Rose said, spinning to face her "Why did you say six months?"

"We've got to go..."

Suddenly the Doctor was angry and advanced on the police officer come kissogram "You said six months, you lied. This is important! This matters! Why did you say six months!"

Rose placed a hand on his arm halting his advance, barely, the look on his face bordered on dangerous, but the red head had turned away at some point and couldn't see it. Suddenly she spun back, her hair flying as she yelled, her face a harsh glare aimed at them both as her eyes flickered between them.

"_Well, why did you say five minutes_!"

**

* * *

**

**Original Song Listened To: Beautiful Soul – Jesse McCartney**

**Rewrite Song Listened To: I Like – Katy Rose**

**Rewrite Song Listened To: I Would Do Anything For Love - Meatloaf**


	8. The Story Of My Life

**A/N **I made a couple of changes to Chapter 7 based on some wonderful constructive criticism from YamiNoTomoyo and Apocolypse Thou, nothing majour, just so it sounds a bit more like 10 than 11, and tried to do the same for this chapter. If anyone wants to go back and reread 7 (especially YamiNoTomoyo and Apocolypse Thou), and let me know if it still needs some more tweaking? I'd be very grateful... Same for this chapter, if you feel it's not quite right, feel free to let me know (politey of course :D my muse is warm enugh without the flames) :p

* * *

**The Story Of My Life**

"_Life is all about timing... the unreachable becomes reachable,_

_the unavailable become available,_

_the unattainable... attainable._

_Have the patience, wait it out It's all about timing."_

– _Stacey Charter_

They ran.

Directly past the snarling Prisoner Zero and its dog, and out onto a small country lane. They kept running until they could see the edge of whatever town the women lived, and then they slowed to a brisk walk as Rose and the Doctor followed the red head in a police uniform while staring at her with mixed expressions of shock and surprise

"You're Amelia?" The Doctor half asked, recognising her now he'd been given the finally clue

"You're late" she threw over her shoulder, her Scottish brogue was back full force, but she refused to look at them

"Amelia Pond? You're the little girl!"

"I'm Amelia, and you're late"

"What happened?" the Doctor asked, and Rose cringed as Amelia turned to look at him for the first time since her back garden

"Twelve years"

"You hit us with a cricket bat!"

"Twelve years..."

"A cricket bat!"

"Twelve years and four psychiatrists"

"Four?" Rose jumped in, cutting off the Doctors repeat of 'cricket bat!'

Amelia slowed down a fraction, letting her eyes meet Roses' for a moment before she turned to face the town again "I kept biting them..."

"Why?" Rose placed a soft hand on Amelia's arm and the woman sighed, tugging her arm free moving onto what looked like a village green as she replied softly

"They said you weren't real"

The Doctor and Rose exchanged a guilty glance, and quickly caught up with her, which didn't take long as she was standing on the edge of a road staring at an ice cream van. An ice cream van that was currently playing a repeat of "Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence, or the human residence will be incinerated"

It took a moment for Rose and Amelia to realise that the Doctor had already jogged over to the parked vehicle, and by the time they caught up with him they were only able to catch the tail end of the conversation

"Why are you playing that?"

The vendor looked at the two women and shrugged "It's supposed to be Claire De Lune..."

The Doctor shook his head, frowning, and spun around on the spot, his eyes dancing everywhere before suddenly starting to run again

"Doctor!" Rose called, immediately chasing after him, "What's going on?"

He didn't reply, merely darted across the road, hopping over any fences and plants he found in the way. He barely stopped to unlock a front door, but it was enough of a pause for the two women to burst in only seconds behind him and catch his explanation

"-ry to burst in like this, we're investigating television fault in the area" the Doctor glanced at Amelia before grinning at the shocked looking elderly women who was clutching the T.V remote to her chest like a weapon "Also crimes, lets have a look"

He pulled the control from the woman's grip and Rose was left to smooth out his story while he flicked through channels and even gave it a quick burst from the sonic screwdriver to check the international broadcasts

"How long have you had the fault?" Rose asked, sticking with the Doctors tale

"Only about five minutes or so, I was just about to phone... it's on every channel..." the woman paused and smiled "Hello Amy dear, are you a policewoman now?"

"Well..." Amelia paused, glancing at Roses' amused expression and feeling like a naughty child again "sometimes..."

"I thought you were a nurse?" the old woman asked, frowning

"I ... can be ... a nurse..."

"Or actually ... a nun?" the woman was giving Amelia a hard look now and rose was struggling not to laugh

"I dabble!"

They stared at each other for a moment, before the old woman back down with a firm "hmm". She turned her stern blue eyes on Rose and the Doctor before she spoke again

"Amy, who are your friends?"

"Who's 'Amy'? You were Amelia" The Doctor cut in, not taking his eyes from the T.V, but Rose saw the girls' defences raise

"Yeah, and now I'm Amy"

"Amelia Pond!" that Doctor finally spared her a glance that was marred by a frown "that was a brilliant name!"

"Bit fairytale" Amy muttered her jaw tight and Rose could only watch as the Doctors own defences activated. Rose knew who would win this.

"What sort of job is a kissogram anyway?"

"I go to parties ... and I ... kiss people" she met the eyes of everyone in the room nervously having been put on the spot "with outfits ... it's a laugh!"

The Doctors glare darkened again and he stopped pretending to still be flipping through channels "You were just a little girl five minutes ago!"

"You're worse than my aunt!"

"I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than everybody's aunt!" All eyes in the room turned to him, most in surprise and he cringed "yeah ... all right ... that's not how I usually introduce myself and ... trust me, it's _not _happening again"

Silence reigned and Rose coughed lightly "The ... message?" she asked, pointing to the shifting eyeball on the television set

"Ah ... yes ... so, it's everywhere ... in every language, they're broadcasting to the whole world"

Rose felt her blood turn to ice, and her comprehension must have shown on her face because before darting to the living room window the Doctor sent her one of those gentle yet thrilled grins that always dispelled the panic clawing at her throat

Pushing the window open the Doctor leaned out and stared at the empty clear blue sky,

"What are you looking for?" Amy asked, her head sticking out next to his "What's up there?"

The Doctor ignored Amy, and came back into the old lady's living room, pacing as his brain flew in a hundred directions at once

"OK... planet this size, two poles and your basic molten core... they'll need ... oh..."

"Forty percent fission blast" Rose cut in, the gold in her eyes glistening like small particles of time "But they'll have to power up first ... won't they?"

"Yes!" the Doctor grinned, before resuming his pacing, "So, assuming a medium sized starship that's twenty minutes... what do you think, twenty minutes?" he asked Rose, partially noticing a tall young man enter the living room with a large laptop as he spun to observe how his experiment was going, his eyes landing on a stunned looking Rose

"Yeah, twenty minutes..." she agreed softly, a hint of fear travelled over her features but he wasn't sure if it was from towards what she knew was going to happen in twenty minutes or to the knowledge she somehow had stored away inside her now. He locked eyes with Rose and his grin faded

"Twenty minutes to what?" Amy asked, causing the two to break eye contact. The Doctor stared at the ceiling, hands in his pockets, while rose leant back against the back of the sofa. The new guy broke the tension by quite suddenly asking "Are you the Doctor and Rose?"

"They are, aren't they?" the old woman announced happily "He's the Doctor and she must be Rose! All those cartoons you drew when you were little Amy... the Raggedy Doctor and Magical Rose! It's really them!"

"Shut ... up..." Both time travellers caught the mutter that passed Amy's lips and both of them chose to ignore it, but Rose couldn't resist asking "cartoons?"

She didn't get an answer, but then she didn't expect to. The blonde man spoke up again and Amy shut her eyes against the embarrassment threatening to kill her.

"Gran, it's them isn't it?"

"It really is!"

"Geoff, shut up!" Amy finally snapped as the Doctor moved to sit on the sofa Rose was perched on the back of, "Twenty minutes to what?"

Everyone fell silent, and the Doctor glanced over his shoulder to find them all, including Rose, watching him. The speed at which her human brain was now keeping up with him was baffling, but the Doctor set that puzzle aside for another time with an audible sigh and he returned his gaze to the T.V before he began speaking

"The human residence ... they're not talking about your home Amy, they're talking about the whole planet" he paused running his hand through his thick brown hair, making it stand on end as he watched the eye flickering around on the T.V screen "Somewhere up there is a space ship, and it's getting ready to incinerate the planet, ladies and gentleman ... We have twenty minutes to the end of the world"

**

* * *

**

"What is this place? Where are we?" Rose asked, as her and Amy jogged to match the Doctors long strides

"Leadworth"

"Where's the rest of it?" the Doctor demanded, exasperated. He would swear they'd circled the entire village twice already

"_This_ is it!" Amy declared, an in the moment it took for him to send her a pained look over his shoulder, both Amy and Rose managed to catch up with him and finally match his strides

"Is there an airport?"

"No..."

"A nuclear power station?"

Any laughed softly, "nope"

"Even a little one?" he half begged, frowning as though he couldn't quite fathom somewhere this isolated

"No..."

"Nearest city then?" he tried again with a sigh

"Glouster, it's half an hour by car" Amy replied, glancing at the silent Rose for encouragement and receiving a soft smile that actually managed to do the job as the Doctor became more frustrated and irate

"We don't _have_ half an hour... Do we have a car?"

"Uh ... no"

"Well that's good!" he snarled "Fantastic, that is ... twenty minutes to save the world and what do I have? A post office..." he glanced to his left and his scowl deepened "and it's shut!"

Then the three of them stopped walking as the Doctor became scarily calm gazing up at the sky. Rose and Amy followed his line of sight and watched as the sky went dark at half past 12 ... midday... daylight... Suddenly the sun seemed to turn black, yet still wreathed in flames. It was beautiful in a stunningly deadly way.

"What's happening? Why is it going dark Doctor? What's wrong with the sun?" Rose reeled off questions, the worry tainting her tone irritated the Doctor once again and he frowned at her

"You know that a forty percent fission blast is enough to destroy the planet, and that it takes twenty minutes to power up, but you don't' know that there's nothing wrong with the sun?"

Rose was about to snap a retort right back but Amy was beginning to panic and drew both their attentions

"What do you mean nothings wrong with it? Just look at it!"

"You're looking at it through a force field" the Doctor sighed, although he still sent Rose the occasional glare "They're sealed off your upper atmosphere and are getting ready to burn the planet" he ignored Amy's horrified look as she glanced around the green, feeling the barely controlled fury bubbling away beneath the surface begin to rise once again

"Oh, and here they come! The human race... the end comes and what do you lot do? Record it down video phone!"

"This isn't real is it? This is some kind of ... big wind up, yeah?" Amy muttered, glancing between the Doctor and Rose, her eyes slightly wild

"Why would I wind you up?"

_It shouldn't have been that difficult to separate the autons arm from its body, the Nestene were improving. Suddenly the girls voice drew his attention "You pulled its arm off!" he grinned at her and threw the simple plastic arm over the small distance they had in the lift watching as she caught it_

"_Yup... plastic" She half glared at him, still shaken up and he couldn't blame her tiny human brain for that_

"_Very clever, nice trick, who were they then students?"_

_He'd turned round then and really stared at her. This silly blonde little human girl who'd blundered in and nearly gotten him caught. He didn't know why he'd felt compelled to save her, maybe because even backed against the wall she's stood her ground, only at the very last second cowering and resigning herself to her fate... and now she was letting him down. Doing the human thing and looking for a logical excuse. But students?_

"_Why would they be students?"_

_She shook her head, that soft blond hair falling over her shoulders "I dunno...!"_

"_Well you said it! Why students?"_

_He turned his back on her, he could hear her floundering, but despite everything she was still fighting, her voice calming the more she rationalised it and he sighed._

"'_Cause ... tah get that many people dressed up ... and bein' silly ... well, they gotta be students"_

_He'd finally caught onto that Londoner brogue and grinned at her over his shoulder, "That made sense, well done"_

_He was actually rather impressed. Not many stories people told themselves made any sense to anyone else, and you could easily get holes picked in them by any normal bystander. There was only one hole he could find in this blond girls story ... and that was the solid plastic arm she held. It said a lot about her though, about how her mind worked. She obviously wasn't one to settle for half answers and minimal information, and that gave the Doctor a problem. He was going to have to explain._

"_Thanks" she muttered, drawing his attention_

"_They're not students"_

"_Well ... whoever they are, when Wilson finds 'em he'd gonna call the police"_

_The Doctor frowned "Who's Wilson?" the girl blinked at him in surprise,_

"_Chief electrician..." a muscle in his face twitched and he turned his back to her again. He'd been certain the area was clear, damn it, more blood on his hands._

"_Wilson's dead"..._

The Doctor blinked himself out of the vision of his first meeting with Rose. She hadn't believed him at first either, but she's kept following him, kept walking by his side, and then chased after him after he'd tried to leave her behind ... more than once. Then he realised he didn't have a clue what Amy had said, but he didn't care. That memory had calmed the darkness in him, for now at least

"You believed me" he told her, figuring that was a relatively safe answer and being proven right when the young woman sighed and rubbed her hands together

"Then I grew up"

He grinned "Oh Amy, you never want to do that" he turned that beaming smile on Rose and her frown melted away. She hadn't missed his lapse into memory lane, or the change it had wrought in his demeanour, he knew she hadn't, but he also knew that Rose wouldn't push him unless he needed it.

"No!" his sudden shout had both women jumping, "Shut up... wait ... hang on ... I missed it!" he threw his hands in the air as shock covered his face and his eyes went wide, suddenly he smacked his hand to his head, and ruffled his hair frantically as he thought back "I saw it and I missed it!"

Rose entwined his fingers with his as she watched his arm twitch as he stood there and let his eyes glaze over for a second while muttering "I saw it, I know did, now what did I see ... what was it..."

Amy sent Rose a look laced with questions and a hint of fear but Rose just shrugged, only a moment later the Doctor raised his head and glanced around the green with only a short laugh and a smug grin that had Rose grinning along with him

"Twenty minutes ... I can do it, twenty minutes this planet burns ... go and see your loved ones, say your goodbyes or stay and help us" the Doctor told Amy, his smug grin still in place

"No"

Both Time Lords blinked at her, and after a moment the Doctor managed to force words past his surprise

"You ... what?"

"No!" The red head grabbed hold of the Doctors tie and dragged him, protesting, over to a car that had just pulled up behind her

"Amy! No ... NO! What are you doing!" Rose cried, following the young woman as she slammed the Doctors tie in the car door before promptly swiping the keys and locking the Doctor in place as he snarled at her

"Are you out of your mind?"

Rose saw the oncoming storm floating just behind his eyes and gently pressed a hand against his shoulder in an attempt to stop him straining against the tie to get at Amy

"Who are you?" the girl demanded, glaring at them both

"You know who I am" the Doctor growled, only backing down when Rose glared at him

"Both of you look at the sky! End of the world in twenty minutes guys!" Rose snapped but her voice was firm, steady and calm

"Better talk quickly then!"

"Amy..." the elderly man paused when three sets of eyes landed on him "umm, I am going to need my car back...?"

"Yes, in a bit, now go and have coffee or something..."

The man watched Amy lock eyes with the blonde woman he'd never seen around the village before and knew he'd already lost

"Who ... are ... you"

"Catch" Rose suddenly told her, launching a small ball shaped object at the girl. The Doctor sent her a soft smile when Amy caught it and he realised what the object was

"I'm the Doctor," he launched in "This is Rose" he had calmed slightly with Roses hand on his shoulder, but the fury at this girls actions was still there behind his eyes, darkening them "We're time travellers, everything we told you twelve years ago is true ... we're real, what's happening right here and now is real and Amy..." The doctor sighed and shut his eyes, suddenly feeling weary

"Amy ... if you don't let him go now ... right now, everything you've ever known is going to be over" Rose finished just as softly. Amy raised her eyes from where they'd been fixed on the carved apple and glanced at the two people before her as she shook her head slowly

"... I don't believe you"

"Just twenty minutes..." the Doctor implored her, taking a grip on her wrist as though he thought she might back away and leave him there "Just believe for twenty minutes"

"Look at it Amy," Rose told her, nodding at the fruit briefly "It's still fresh, and you know it's the same apple... just ... Amy, just for twenty minutes believe in us ... believe in the Doctor"

Time seemed to grind to a halt as Amy moved her eyes from Roses' to the Doctors. He met her gaze with more strength than he felt. More than once today he'd nearly lost himself to the darkness that stained his soul, and each and every time Rose had brought him back one way or another and yet she could still as this human, who they'd abandoned, to trust him without hesitation.

And then the car beeped, and he was free.

"What do we do?"

"Stop that nurse"

The man wasn't that far away, across the small car park, over a low chain fence and to the centre of the green. The Doctor ran past the nurse, snatching the phone out of his hand and staring at it as Amy and Rose skid to a stop next time him

"The suns going out, the world is coming to an end, and you're taking pictures of a man and his dog, why?" the Doctor asked him as he handed the man's phone back

"Amy?" the nurse turned terrified eyes on the red head to his left and she grinned

"Hi! Oh, this is Rory, he's a friend-"

"Boyfriend-"

"Kind of boyfriend..."

"Amy!"

Rose could see the Doctor getting impatient again and this time she couldn't really blame him

"Man and dog, why?" she repeated for him, but the nurse just froze up, his eyes flicking between them and they could already see what was coming

"Oh ... My... God... It's them!"

"Just answer the question please" Amy begged, her eyes on the floor

"It's them though! The Doctor and Rose... the Raggedy Doctor..."

"Yeah! They came back!"

"But they were a story, he was a game...!"

The Doctor moved faster than Rose could move to stop him and gripped the front of the nurses' shirt and pulled him face to face, slamming the man against his chest to reiterate his point

*slam* "man and dog" *slam* "Why?" *slam* "Tell me..." *slam* "Now!"

"S-sorry..." the nurse stuttered "because he can't be there..."

"**...Because he's in a hospital, in a coma"**

"_In a hospital in a coma"_

Rory blinked as the Doctor released him with a strange manic grin "... yeah..."

The Doctor calmly brushed down Rory's jacket and his smile widened "Knew it ... multi-form, you see?" he glanced at Rose, he knew now wasn't the time for experiments but her seemingly random bursts of clarity were more than intriguing him.

"Can disguise itself as anything really, but it needs a life feed... a psychic link with a living" he tapped Rory on the forehead and watched the man rock back on his heels with a frozen expression "but dormant mind"

The now familiar snarling of the man with his dog had the two Time Lords spinning to face the sound

"Prisoner Zero ..." Rose muttered, following the Doctor as he approached the creature carefully, and just catching Rory and Amy's murmured conversation

"What? There's a Prisoner Zero too?"

"Yes..."

"See that ship up there?" The Doctor called across to the multi-form, and drawing his companions gaze to the silver star shaped ship with a huge blue eyeball in the centre as it floated over Leadworth

"That ship there is scanning for non-terrestrial technology... and nothing says non-terrestrial ... like sonic screwdriver" he heard Rose laugh and imagined that tongue poking out between her teeth as he raised the small, forever reliable, device to the sky and set it going.

Wind screen wipers, electric wheelchairs and fire engines, all started moving. Car alarms begin going off, and vehicles of all types began driving themselves. The Doctor changed the direction of the screwdriver and street lamps began exploding and then a telephone box

"I think someone might notice this, don't you?" and then, as he changed to another setting, the sonic screwdriver exploded in his hand and the multi-form smiled. The Doctor jumped and dropped the device, dragging his hands through his hair as he knelt next to the still sparking screwdriver

"No, no, no! Don't do that!" he whined

"The ship, Doctor!" Rose called "It's leaving"

He leapt to his feet and began shouting at the sky for the ship to come back... just in case it could hear him from that distance

"Can you fix the screwdriver?" Rose asked when he lowered his arms from waving at the prison ship, he'd barely shaken his head when Amy's cry caught they're attention

"Rose ... Doctor... The drain, it just sort of melted and went down the drain..." Amy explained, staring at the grate the creature had vanished down

"Well of course it did" the Doctor snapped, before sighing and running his hands through his already mussed hair

"What do we do now, Doctor" Rose asked after a moments silence

"It's hiding in human form, we need to flush it out somehow, force it to reveal itself ... no Tardis ... no screwdriver, seventeen minutes ... come on think, think!"

"So that ... thing ... _that_ hid in my house for twelve years?" Amy asked, and Rose launched into an explanation suddenly enough to surprise even herself

"Multi-forms can live for millennia, twelve years isn't even a holiday sweetheart" She felt the doctors eyes on her, but avoided his gaze. The fountain of information she kept coming out with was scaring her, and she wasn't comfortable with this new, new Doctor yet. He was behaving worse than his ninth self ever had, and Rose felt more than a little lost when John's memories kept surfacing randomly, usually when something else was triggering the information

"So how come you two show up on the same day that lot do? The same minute!" Amy snapped at them both, glaring

"That would be my fault" The doctor announced, stepping towards Amy with one hand in his trouser pocket and the other rubbing the back of his neck "They're looking for him, but they followed me... saw me through the crack in your bedroom wall and got a fix ... they're only late 'cause I am"

He paused and his eyes flicked to Rory as a sudden thought occurred to him, not noticing that the human looked decidedly nervous at the intense expression on the Doctors face

"Give me your phone..."

"You're being rude again" The Doctor turned brown eyes on Rose and a smile ghosted over his face, which she returned. Then Rory's disbelieving voice shattered the brief moment as he started questioning what was happening again, and the Doctors glare returned

"Phone! Now! Gimme!"

He began flipping through the photos on the phones touch screen, and the others watched

"Are these all the coma patients?" Rose asked suddenly and the nurse nodded

"Yeah..."

"No! They're all the multi-form" the Doctor corrected, "eight coma patients equals eight disguises for Prisoner Zero"

"He had a dog though... a dogs in a coma?" Amy asked, puzzled, and Rose couldn't help but laugh

"The patient dreams he's walking a dog, Prisoner Zero gets a dog" the Doctor responded, eyes still focussed on Rory's phone and suddenly his head shot up as he yelled "laptop!" not noticing three sets of eyes glaring at him as their bodies tried to regulate their heart rates again

"Your friend!" The Doctor turned to Amy, "What was his name? Not him, the good looking one..."

Rose rolled her eyes took the insult with a barely sarcastic "thanks"

"Geoff" however, got a stronger reaction

"Oh thanks!"

"He had a laptop in his bag, a big laptop! ... I need Geoff's laptop!" he spun away from them and back again as his body tried to catch up with his thoughts "You three, get to the hospital, get every body out and clear the floor ...the entire floor, and call me when it's done!"

"Doctor-!" Rose called as he began to dart odd, and to his credit he did stop and let her catch up to him

"They're going to need you Rose, my part is simple and you can't help ... but you can keep them safe, all right?" he asked her, his voice low and he was more her Doctor in that moment than any other time since she'd arrived back, so Rose nodded and watched him jog away before moving back to Rory and Amy, embracing her Torchwood team leader persona.

"We need to get to that hospital... car?" Rose asked softly

"We can use yours Rory" Amy volunteered, tugging on the nurses' arm and leading the way to the small red mini parked nearby

**

* * *

**

Rose paced, and Amy tapped her food on the hard floor of the hospital foyer as they waited for Rory to find out what was going on. They'd arrived at the hospital to find it in a state of panic, with more people than they could count crowded round the reception desk

"Rory!" Amy called suddenly, and the young man made his way over to them, shaking shi head

"It's no use; something's happening up there ... we can't get through"

"Yes, but what's happened?" Rose asked firmly, but Rory just shook his head

"I don't know ... no one knows"

"I'm phoning him..." Amy announced but rose shook her head, pacing again

"No, he's busy, there is a way in we just have to ... notice ... it" she stared at Amy grinning suddenly

"What?"

"Rory, do you see what I see?" the nurse grinned too, much to Amy's irritation

"What!"

"Uniform, Amy, you're still wearing it ... get your hair up will you?" rose asked her still smiling

"What about you though?" Rory asked, but Rose just kept grinning and pulled out a blank piece of paper from her pocket

"Trust me; you ready? Come one then"

As they approached the medical staff blocking the stairwells, rose moved to walk straight through them, and sent them her filthiest look when they stopped her

"No-no one came go up" a young, terrified looking intern told her

Rose raised an eyebrow and flicked the blank piece of paper open confidently "Marianne Tyler, Torchwood operative ... I strongly suggest you step aside" she breathed softly

The man stuttered but his partner was steadier and tried to stop Amy and Rory after he'd checked out her 'ID'.

"This is P.C Pond and a medic from this hospital, both of who have clearance now stand down!" Rose growled, locking her eyes with the man and Amy cleared her throat, reverting back to her clipped English voice again

"Do you want to be arrested for obstruction of justice?"

The man let them past with barely a grumble.

As they jogged up the stairs towards the coma ward Rose grinned, starting to realise why the Doctor was usually grinning so much... that had been brilliant

"Amy, call the Doctor now please" the other woman nodded, slightly breathless and as she dialled, Rory tried to gasp questions

"How did you get us past?" and what's Torchwood?"

"Not now Rory, which floor is the coma ward on?" rose asked pausing on the next landing they arrived at and letting the nurse get his bearings

"Doctor?" Amy's voice made them jump, but she just grinned at them, "We're in, on our way to the coma ward now..."

"..."

"Are you on your way? You're gonna need a car"

"..."

Amy blinked at the phone for a moment "He hung up ... said he'd commandeered a vehicle

Rose smiled and took the phone from her without explanation "Which floor, Rory?"

"This one ... actually" he replied, looking surprised

"Lead the way then..."

Rory moved quickly through the twisting corridors of the hospital, moving into a light jog at Roses' insistence.

"We're nearly there," he told them a few minutes later "the next hall on our left"

Rose moved to over take him when a voice called out

"Officer?"

The three of them skidded to a stop as a woman and two young girls appeared from one of the adjacent hallways

"What happened?" Amy asked, taking a step forwards before Rose could stop her and the woman began speaking quickly

"There was a man, he had a dog, I think everyone's dead, the nurses, even Dr Ramsden..."

"If you could hold on for one moment please?" Rose interrupted as Amy's phone went off in her hand, she smiled at them and answered

"Yes?"

"_Are you in? Cleared the coma ward?"_

"We're here, but it didn't need clearing ... Prisoner Zero's in the ward too"

"_You need to get out of there Rose"_

"What was the point of sending us here, if you were just gonna call us out again?"

Rose froze as she noticed the woman speaking again and several things clicked into place simultaneously. The ward had already been evacuated, so where has the woman and her children come from? For someone who'd apparently witnessed murders, and a mad man with an aggressive dog coming into a hospital ward, they'd been remarkably calm.

The mother rose could have put down to shock, but the girls weren't even crying and all three had waited patiently while rose spoke on the phone. Until now. Until she'd mentioned Prisoner Zero.

"... kept shouting, and that dog, I swear it was rabid... where did they go? Have you seen them?"

Rory was standing next to Rose, but Amy was slightly in front form where she'd approached the woman, but with a firm hand on Amy's stomach, Rose pushed her to stand with Rory

"_...clear the ward, not get trapped ... Rose ... Rose?"_

"Too late Doctor, Prisoner Zero is here"

"What?" Amy asked, and Rose smiled but never moved her eyes from the children and their mother

"Look at the mouths" she reminded them, as the mothers voice continued to babble away from the oldest girls' mouth. Then it froze and the 'mother' smiled

"oh ... I'm getting it wrong again aren't I?" she sighed, taking in two looks of horror and one face filled with a strong glare "It's so difficult... there's so many mouths!" As the three figured opened their mouths to reveal long, elongated spiked as teeth Rose turned to Amy and Rory as they breathed shocked exclamations and yelled them into motion

"RUN!"

Rory lead them directly to the coma ward they'd been looking for and as he and Rose slammed the door shut, Amy found an old cleaning brook to slot through the handles

"Will that ... keep it out?" Rory asked and Rose shook her head

"No such luck, Rory" The she heard the doctors voice over the phone she still had clutched in her hand and followed the two humans to the far end of the ward

"_Rose! Rose what's going on there, what's happened! Rose, Amy, Rory, somebody talk to me!"_

"We're all here Doctor" Rose managed to reply before he carried on "We're in the coma ward but he's here" she glanced at the shaking doors and sighed, "and he's getting in"

"What window are you?"

Rose blinked and turned to Rory, "What window?" she asked the nurse and she heard the Doctor sigh

"_Yes, yes, that's what I said!"_

"First floor, on the left, fourth from the end" Rory answered quickly. Rose grinned and threw him a quick thumbs up before repeating it back to the Doctor, finishing just as the broom snapped and Prisoner Zero appeared in the door way. Rose froze, adding "hurry" to the end of her instructions and hanging up.

Thy stared at each other a moment or two, prisoner Zero raking the woman's eyes over the male nurse, Amelia Pond and the strange woman whose eyes shone with a predatory strength just starting to awaken. She would have to be quick. If the strange one, Rose, realised her own strength... also that meddlesome Doctor was on his way. The stolen eyes snapped back to Amelia and Prisoner Zero made the woman's image smile.

"Little Amelia Pond... for twelve years I've watched you grow up! You never even felt me watching you... always waiting for her raggedy Doctor and magical Rose to return and whisk her away ..." The creature locked it's eyes with the Rose and smiled again "Well not this time Amelia"

"you know nothing of time," Rose hissed before glancing at Amy's phone as it beeped, dragging Rory and Amy to the ground suddenly as a ladder crashed through the window they'd been standing next to

Moments later, Roses' face blossomed into a grin as the Doctor climbed through the window

"Right then! Hello!" Rose threw her arms round his neck in a brief hug, which he returned lightly, but only for a moment and when he released her, her smile was gone and she felt cold.

"Am I late? No, still got three minutes ... what have I missed" he turned his grin on Prisoner zero, but it faded quickly

"Hello there Prisoner Zero... there's still time left you know"

"Time for what, Time Lord?"

"If you take that disguise off those ship will find you and nobody has to die..."

"The Atraxi will kill me this time Doctor and if I must die, let there be fire..." the woman's form practically sung

"You came here by opening that crack right? The crack in space and time?" Rose cut in, standing in front of Rory and Amy who were watching the conversation with 2 parts fascination and 1 part horror "So do it again, just leave..."

"I did not open the crack" Prisoner Zero replied, but her eyes never strayed to Rose

"Someone did" the Doctor pointed out, his smile was long gone now and he paused when the image of the woman looked almost surprised

"The cracks in the skin of the universe, don't you know where they came from Doctor? You don't do you?" the woman's face twisted into a smirk and next time she spoke a child's voice emerged

"The Doctor, with Rose, in the Tardis doesn't know! Doesn't know, doesn't know!" the voice returned to what it should have been and now the multi-form was smug. Too smug. "The universe is cracked ... the Pandorica will open ... silence will fall"

And silence did. No one in the coma ward moved or made a sound. Then the Doctor grinned

"Look at that" he bounced and moved to Rose, pointing at the clock just above Prisoner Zero's head "Look at that!"

He focussed on Prisoner Zero once again but his infectious grin didn't seem to be affecting the multi-form

"Yes, I know, just a clock, but!... do you know what is happening right now? I've got my team working ... all the top ranked genius' on the planet tapping away... under Geoff's direction of course..." he added, sending a bright grin at a shocked looking Amy

"And they are spreading the word... all over the world, quantum fast!" he turned his gaze back to Prisoner Zero, hands in his trouser pockets as he rocked back on his heels

"Do you know what that word is? That word ... is 'Zero'... Now, if it were _me_ up in the sky in a great big battleship, monitoring all Earth communications I'd be rather inclined to take that as ... you know, just a small hint" The Doctor began pacing just in front of Rose and smiled as he spotted her thrilled grin

"And if I had a great huge _fleet_ of big battle ships, I'd be able to track a simple old computer virus back to its source in... Oh... under a minute?" He stopped pacing, let his smile vanish, faced prisoner Zero again and pulled his hand from his pocket

"The source, by the way ... is here" he held up Rory's mobile and beamed again as a sharp white light flooded the coma ward "I think they just found us"

"The Atraxi are limited Doctor ... While I'm in this form they are unable to detect me... All they've done is track a phone"

"Ah, yes" the doctor conceded, "But this? This is the best bit, this bit is brilliant ... because do you know what this phone has lots of? Hmm?" he paused, his face as hard as stone and his eyes merciless "Pictures ... Pictures of you, of _every_ form you've learnt to take are being uploaded now.. No Tardis, No screwdriver... I'm fantastic!" he announced with a dark grin. Rose couldn't' stop the bubble of laughter that emerged but the Doctor didn't turn

"Then I shall take a new form..."

"Oh stop it! You know you can't, it takes months to form that kind of psychic link-"

"And I've had years"

The multi-form glowed and Rose spun as she heard Amy collapse to the floor "Amy! No, no! Stay awake!" she shouted, skidding to her knees at the girls' side

"Amy, you have to fight it, you have to wake up!" the Doctor was there, at the you woman's head and Rose met his eyes looking for reassurance, but Rory's voice drew their attentions

"Rose! Look..."

The Time Lords spun to stare at Prisoner Zero, only to come face to face with identical, if very stiff, clones of themselves.

"Well that's rubbish ... is that me is that what I look like?" The Doctor spluttered, taking in the state of his beloved suit, before staring down at the identical cloths he was wearing and sighing

"Don't you know?" Rory asked, frowning at him and the Doctor ran a hand through his hair

"Long day ..."

"Why us though?" rose asked, climbing to her feet and approaching Prisoner Zero, seeing the doctor leap to his feet and move to stand juts in front of her "You're linked to Amy, so why are you copying us?"

"I'm not" came a soft Scottish brogue, and from between Clone-Rose and Clone-Doctor appeared Child-Clone-Amelia. The child stared up at them and gave a small sarcastic smile that didn't suit her face

"Poor Amy Pond ... still such a child inside, dreaming of the magical Doctor and Rose she knows will return to save her" Prisoner Zero locked eyes with the Doctor, "All those nights crying herself to sleep, waiting for that promise to be fulfilled" the multi-form dragged it's eyes over the Doctor's form and sneered "What a disappointment you've been"

Rose couldn't quite believe her eyes, but this was actually affecting the Doctor, his shoulders had started to slump, and there was a dark desolation in his eyes that almost scared her, and suddenly Roses' eyes narrowed

"No ..." The Doctor stared at her and the Child-Clone-Amelia turned eyes on her with a dangerous glare, but Rose continued unhindered "No, that's not it ... she's dreaming about us because she can hear us..."

She darted back to Amelia's side and bit her lip, hoping her idea would work "Amelia please keep listening ... The room in your house, the one the Doctor helped you see ... he told you not to go in, we both did, but you did it anyway, remember? Please, remember that room ... What did you see in there ... Amy, dream about what you saw in that room sweetheart..."

"Don't move..." The Doctor growled as the Multi-form made to advance on Rose with a wild cry of "no! No, no!" and suddenly there were no clones of the Doctor or Rose or the strange harsh child Amelia, but a translucent sea serpent like creature

"Congratulations, Prisoner Zero" the Doctor whispered, "A perfect imitation of yourself"

Suddenly the voice of the Atraxi had retuned and was echoing round the room loudly

"Prisoner Zero is located... Prisoner Zero is Restrained..."

The serpent creature writhed and thrashed in the beam of light that appeared around it but after a moment it stilled and stared at the Doctor "Silence Doctor, Silence will fall..."

Rory darted to the window as soon as Prisoner Zero vanished from the room and laughed nervously "The sun's ... its normal again, is that good ... does that mean it's over?"

"Amy?" Rose murmured, ignoring the nurse for the moment "Amy, are you with us? Wake up now, come one..."

The redhead groaned, and Rose sighed in relief as the other woman slowly sat up "What happened?"

"The Doctor did it!" Rory told her excitedly, kneeling next to her so she wouldn't have to stand straight away, and Rose backed off to give them some space

"No I didn't" the doctor corrected, staring at Rory's phone as he replied. Rose moved to his side and she frowned, "What are you doing?"

"I'm tracking the signal back ... Sorry in advance, by the way Rory..."

"What for?" the young man asked as he helped Amy back onto her feet slowly

"The bill" he Doctor explained before putting the phone to his ear "Oi! You lot, who said you could go? This is a level 5 planet under article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation, and you! You were gonna burn it! Back here, right now ... all of you!"

He hung up and began marching out of the coma ward "OK, now I've done it"

* * *

The Doctor pushed the doors to the roof of the building open with a clang, and as he marched over to the edge of the roof he could hear Amy and Rory pepper Rose with worried questions that she handled smoothly

"So this was a good idea then was it? They were leaving!" Amy half snapped, her worry showing through

"Trust us, when you travel with the Doctor you learn that leaving is all well and good, but never coming back is much safer" Rose reassured gently. Her time at Torchwood had clearly improved her already sparkling people skills

The huge Atraxi ship hovered over the roof, and Rose moved to his side as he grinned "Hello there, The Doctor is in!"

The same booming voice that had been haunting their steps for the last half an hour or so echoed across the roof "You are not of this world"

"No... but I've put a lot of time into it" the doctor replied calmly, and rose smiled as she watched him, completely in his element. There was still that shadow that Prisoner Zero's words had dragged up shrouding him, but she had hope.

"Is this world important?" The voice made Rose move her gaze from the Doctor to the ship and frown

"Important?" she hissed, only pausing when the doctor slipped his hand into her

"What does important mean, exactly ... 6 billion people live here, is that important? But I have a better question" the Doctor paused for a moment, "Is this world a threat to the Atraxi?" the ship broadcast no answer and the doctor rocked back on his heels

"Well come on! You're monitoring the _entire_ planet, is this world a threat?"

A blue hologram hovered in the air between the ship and the time Lord, running through imaged and clips and videos at a speed almost too fast to follow, and Rose gasped, drawing a please smiled form the Doctor

"No"

"Are the people of this world guilty of _any_ crime by the laws of the Atraxi?" the Doctor continued, bouncing slightly, and watching with Rose as the ship once again flipped through Earths records

"No"

"Right then! So, just one more question ... Is this world protected? And you'd better search carefully for this one 'cause you lot? You're not the first to come here..." the Doctor shook his head and chuckled "there have been ... oh ... oh so many, and what you lot need to think about is what happened to them?"

Rose was grinning now and she squeezed her hand, returning the grin as the Atraxi finally found the information on him. He watched as they flipped through an image of every one of his regenerations, noticed the surprised intake of breath when it reached his ninth visage, and he released her hand to walk through his own image and send his darkest glare at the giant eye in the centre of the Atraxi ship

"I'm the Doctor ... Basically, run"

The Atraxi apparently took the warning for what it was and it was almost amusing to watch the eye's panicked flickering as the ship spun around it and it ascended into the air at an impressive speed.

Rose could hear Amy and Rory celebrating and couldn't stop herself hugging the Doctor, he picked her up and spun her once before setting her down quickly and pulling the Tardis key out of the breast pocket on his shirt. It was glowing gold and he met Roses eyes with a grin, only to find her grinned back

They both ran. They didn't even notice that Amy and Rory hadn't seen them leave and weren't following them. They simply ran.

When they reached the Tardis, they were both still laughing, but Rose pressed her back to the Tardis' second door and stared across Amy's garden

"You all right, Rose?" the doctor asked softly, the shadows behind his eyes still barely held at bay and she smiled

"I will be ... Go on then, take the first look ... just ... just don't leave without me..." she told him, and he smiled, and unlocked the Tardis door

"Ok, what have you got for me this time..."

The first words Rose heard, once he managed to unlock the old ships doors, made her laugh "look at you! ... oh you beautiful thing, juts look at you...!"

It was minutes, or maybe a few hours when his head peered round the door and met Roses' shining eyes, offering her his hand and pulling her inside the new Tardis

**

* * *

**

Amy was laughing when Rory finally put her down. She brushed her long red hair out of her eyes as she spoke "so is that it then? Is that them gone?" she stared at the sky where the eye ship had vanished and grinned "Who were they then anyway?"

Her smile faded as she stared around at the empty roof "Rose?" she paused, her heart in the throat, "Doctor?"

"Look! The door" Rory pointed out the roof entrance, the doors he'd shut behind them wide open and he suddenly found himself running after Amy and merely trying to keep her in sight.

They both ran. They didn't even notice the strange looks the hospital staff were giving them. They simply ran.

Rory followed Amy out to his car, let her drive because she wouldn't let him argue. He watched tensed as she nearly wrecked then twice on the way back to Leadworth village and skid to a stop outside her home.

Amy didn't even bother turning off the ignition before she flew out of the car around the outside path of her home. She knew she was too late when she heard that familiar sound of the engines as she reached her garden, but she still flew down the small path, stopping abruptly under the rose arch and staring, breathless as the police box vanished.

She heard Rory behind her, he'd seen it this time too. She wasn't mad.

Amy shut her eyes, a single tears spilling down her face as Rory shifted, uncertain what to say or do.

He couldn't do anything. Rory had seen everything this time. She really wasn't mad.

That just made everything harder.

**

* * *

**

**Song Listened To: Miracle – Cascada**

**Song Listened To: Next Go Round – Nickelback**


	9. Take A Chance On Me

_A/N: As always, it's not mine and regular updates can be found on my profile page. xx_

**Take A Chance On Me**

_There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. - Cynthia Heimel_

_Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. - Seneca

* * *

_

Rose was watching the vortex readouts as they flickered across the Tardis' new screen. Occasionally her eyes would rove the ships new interior and she couldn't help the grin she felt splitting her face.

The Tardis looked beyond amazing.

She felt the ship purr in her mind and laughed. The controls were completely different, but the Doctor had already said it wouldn't take long to pick it up with the ships guidance, and Rose remembered the soft brush of the ship she'd flown across the void and had to agree with him.

He'd been so happy at getting back inside the Tardis that the awkwardness that had been present before the old girls crash hadn't returned yet, but the longer Rose waited for him to come back from the wardrobe, the more nervous she got.

Standing from the pilots' seat, Rose moved slowly round the new console, brushing her fingertips over everything gently and laughing softly as the Tardis beeped and flashed meaningless things at her.

"Having fun?"

Rose jumped, and her eyes shot to the Doctors as he stood on the next level up watching her. He was wearing another, undamaged version, of that familiar brown suit and was just tugging on his long coat

"Sorry … we were just..."

He smiled and hopped down the stairs quickly "I know, it's fine... so where do you want to go? She needs a nice short trip somewhere to run her in" he rubbed his hands together, suddenly beaming and letting his fingers run over the console quickly, only pausing every few moments to let the Tardis tell him what to press or flip next.

"What about the moon?" Rose suggested nervously, "It's certainly a short trip..."

The Doctor pulled a face and tipped his head indecisively "Your moons boring can't even go outside the Tardis, there's no air, and all that dust? Nah, but _a_ moon now that's a different matter" he slammed a lever down and stared at the central column as it began to move, and they dropped out of the vortex relatively smoothly

As he bounded to the doors of the Tardis, Rose got the familiar feeling of warm butterflies as he stood there, waiting for her to join him before he flung the doors open and stepped out onto a strange moon, surrounded by nothing but starlight. There were no planets, no nearby solar systems and the glow from the stars made the ground they were walking on shimmer like a carpet of diamonds.

"This is the moon of darkness, not very appropriately named but there we go, it won't be discovered for another, oh four centuries or so but when it is it becomes the largest casino planet in the closest five galaxies!" He spins to face her, his coat flaring and swirling up a cloud of glittering dust making her laugh

"It's got perfect gravity density for nearly every species in the surrounding galaxies, enough air to support any nearby life form, and a few no so nearby ones, and there's even pockets of Prenorim acid in places for the Paratonins, but there's no planets, this moon sits in a field of stars, circling it's own orbit"

"So..." Rose took in the landscape that was beautiful in its bleakness "There's no one here? Not one person on the entire planet... moon?"

"Just us!" The Doctor smiled before letting it fade slowly "I thought we could do with some time to catch up, you know without the Tardis crashing, alien invasion, threat of genocide..." he shrugged, and there was the awkwardness Rose had been waiting for as his eyes skittered from hers "what do you think?"

"I think..." Rose paused, and spun slowly, surveying the stunning landscape with a small smile "I think it's the perfect place to be undisturbed" She caught his eyes and he gave her a soft smile, before pulling off his coat and laying it on the ground, flopping down on it with a sigh and reminding her of New Earth.

"De ja vu..." she muttered, before joining him on the coat and staring out at the stars surrounding them.

There they sat. Neither knew how to start or how much time had really passed but eventually Rose sighed and the Doctor turned his eyes on her, studying her profile for a moment or two before she felt his eyes and glanced at him, her nerves written all over her face

"Have you decided yet?" she asked softly, and he frowned

"What? Decided what? What do you mean?" Rose simply watched him as he babbled and sighed again

"Whether to leave me in Cardiff 21st Century, presumably with Jack?" she half asked, blinking at his stunned expression and trying not to get angry as he floundered

"How do you...?... well, I, what I mean is...you..."

"I saw the co-ordinates you'd entered when I was trying to get her stabilised" she explained, returning her eyes to the stars around them before he could see the pain there, and the start of the tears

The Doctor was silent and his chest was strangely tight. At long last he said something very rare,

"I'm sorry..." Rose turned back to him and when she couldn't help but stare, and he knew it had been the right response "I'm not going to … to do that"

"If you don't want me here I'll go … I just thought-" Rose shook her head and had to turn away again

"-No! I do, Rose … it's just-" He froze, realising his mouth had gotten away from him again, but there she lay, watching him and calmly waiting for him to finish

"I've done..." he shook his head and his hands clenched into fists when he couldn't make himself finish the sentence and he glared up at the stars. There was silence for a few minutes while the Doctor fumed to himself and then a cool hand slid over his fist and his startled brown eyes met Roses'

"I know that whatever happened was ... bad, Doctor... your eyes are darker than I've ever seen them..." at her softly breathed words the Doctor actually flinched, and Roses' determination strengthened, as did her grip on his hand.

"How can you...?" he stated, his voice choked and Rose cut him off

"Because you're still you, it just takes a bit more to see it at the moment..."

The Doctor was silent, but Rose had learnt when living with John just how far to push and at long last his hand relaxed under hers and he averted his haunted gaze back to the stars

"I... Gallifrey is held inside a time lock, a time lock I put there, they were going to ... The Master, he survived, somehow, he was always part of their plan Rose, I never knew! And he brought them back, he broke the time lock, pulled the planet into the sky, oh that beautiful planet-!"

The Doctor choked and shut his eyes, and as much as Rose wanted to wrap him in a warm hug, she knew now wasn't the moment and just tightened her grip on his hand

"He released everything I trapped there, everything that I gave up everything for to keep locked away, the Daleks, the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties and the Nightmare Child, he opened the gates of hell right over the Earth..."

He barely paused for breath and there were fine trembles travelling his body, and Rose was beginning to understand the flashes of the escaped Oncoming Storm she'd been seeing aimed at herself and Amy

"In the final days of the time war, they were going to rupture time, rip the vortex apart and destroy everything, time itself would have ceased to exist, it was all but suicide, would have obliterated everything while the Time Lords ascended to beings of mere thought alone, I ... I had to ... Rose I had to stop them! and then I had to do it again, twice I've had to condemn my people, and my planet, and my friends to the never ending torment of the last days of the war, locked into repetitive eternal battle outside of time and force them to endure never ending death and terror and pain"

"Oh Doctor..." Rose murmured, she could see the utter despair on his face and the madness that had been lingering on the edges of his eyes since she arrived was now flooding his gaze

"What's the point?" he snarled suddenly, tensing again, "You were right when we were in Van Statten's basement... what _have_ I become? How am I any better than _a st__inking Dalek!_?" he raged, snatching his hand from hers and lurching to his feet, hands running though his hair frantically as he paced away from the judgement and disgust he knew must be lying in her gaze "All I do, all I've ever done, is bring death and pain and fear and-"

"-Joy, and excitement, happiness, and contentment ... and love" Rose watched his back stiffen as he froze in his pacing and she slowly sat up, wary that even her movements may tip him over the edge beyond help

"This... right here, right now, is what separates you from a Dalek" she risked, her voice firm and certain. She knew he was listening, but his breathing was still ragged and his back still as tense as an iron rod

"This pain, this frustration … the regret? That unbearable doubt flooding your thoughts at the moment? That makes you a better person than anyone I've ever met and that includes the aliens, that's what sets you apart from the likes of the Daleks, Doctor, your compassion for your friends _and_ your enemies"

The Doctor had his eyes pressed shut as though he could block out her words through sheer willpower alone, but despite that his over-active mind was digesting her words and trying to make sense of them. He didn't understand her. He'd never been able to understand this simple human, how she could be so strong and so very forgiving. But was she right? Did his mere compassion excuse him from what he'd done?

No of course not, but that wasn't actually what she was saying was it? She wasn't trying to brush his deeds under the metaphorical carpet and ignore them like most would, that really would have fanned the flames of his fury along with giving them a convenient target, so then, what was Rose doing?

She was telling him that the regret and the doubt made him more than a monster. He scoffed, but it sounded like a choked sob even to his ears. But wasn't that was she was saying? Truly if he didn't offer his enemies a chance for redemption and an option to walk away as he always did then his own fears would come to pass. He truly would be no better than a Dalek or the Cybermen, so was he very _different_ from them with his compassion and regret?

Maybe, maybe not, but was he _better_ than them?

The Doctor jumped when he felt her small hand press again his back and he spun, making her jerk her hand away warily, but she didn't step backwards and he regarded her for a moment locking her in place with the intensity of his chocolate brown gaze, before he shut his eyes again with a sigh and ran long fingers through his hair

"I couldn't leave you in Cardiff now if I wanted too, look what happened without you..." he whispered, his voice hoarse as though he'd been screaming his internal torment to the stars and when he opened his eyes they were wet with tears he wasn't allowing to fall

Roses' face softened and she slowly held her arms open, surprised at the speed at which he wrapped her in a hug so tight she couldn't help but chuckle and gasp

"Can't breathe...!"

He loosened his grip but didn't release her, letting his head fall to rest on her shoulder and Rose let him, silent now she could breath again, she merely laid her own arms around his neck and shoulders and let him hold her till the trembles still racking his body stilled and his breathing evened out

**

* * *

**

They'd settled back onto the long brown coat once the Doctor seemed calmer, but he never released her hand, and Rose didn't try to make him. Instead she talked while they both lay staring at the moons glistening surface and the carpet of stars above them.

She told him about the first two years in the parallel world. All the things that she'd never had the chance tell him about the first time she'd come back. She told him about her younger brother, and how Pete had gotten everyone's ID's settled in. Rose described in detail the huge mansion Pete had bought for Jackie, and how her mum had loved the waiting staff till she'd had nothing to do forcing the older Tyler to fire them.

She explained exactly how she'd convinced Torchwood to hire her and Micky by sneaking past their security system and re-cataloguing their alien technology centre, then once found proceeding to prove why they'd gotten half the item categorised incorrectly. Described the training they'd made her go through, and how most of it she'd never actually used when working with Torchwood. Rose shivered a little when she told the Doctor about the gun training, and how although she had been forced to carry one by regulation, it had always been her last resort.

Then she laughed as she told him how many times she'd been pulled up in front of the bosses for "putting her team in danger" when talking her way out of an alien trap.

"You said the metacri- … John, shared his memories?" the Doctors soft voice interrupted her gently, halfway through her description of a telepathic alien called a Tinches that looked like a small human child who had wanted a permit to live on earth to study their unique flora, and green eyes turned from the sky to find the Doctor watching.

Rose honestly had no idea how long he'd been staring at her as she filled the silence with her life, but he seemed calmer and his eyes were slowly regaining their innate sparkle. She knew that nothing had been fixed, and that there were going to be close shaves with the Oncoming Storm, but she hoped (now that he'd told her he wasn't going to leave her somewhere on Earth) that she'd be there to argue the Doctors case to him and stand in the path of his fury before he hurt himself by harming those around him. She hoped that, although nothing had been fixed tonight, that things were going to get better for the Doctor from here on out.

"Yeah," she nodded, "When we found out that Pete had a damaged Tardis tucked away, he tried to buy me some extra time by using his memories to explain the physical changes, apparently I was-"

"-Still thinking like a human?"

Rose laughed, drawing a smile from the Doctor, "Who's tellin' this story hmm?"

"Sorry," he conceded softly, shaking his head "I was just wondering where all this knowledge you kept coming out with today came from..." He trailed off when her face sobered quickly, and she heaved a sigh, turning her eyes back to the sky, frowning.

"I... I'd assumed it was from Johns memories, he just sort of let me drift through his thoughts... but I'm not so certain now, I didn't know about the force field sealing off the atmosphere, and you did so..." she shrugged and let her puzzled face turn back to study him.

After a moment or two of watching each other intently, but with a certain level of shyness only found between friends who haven't seen each other in years, and aren't quite certain what's changed yet, the Doctor released her hand from his and shifted, propping himself up on one elbow as he wiggled the fingers of his other hand in front of her face "May I?"

Rose nodded softly, and the Doctor gently laid his fingers to her temples, watching as her eyes fell closed before shutting his own and concentrating.

**

* * *

**

It looked as though they were standing on clouds and Rose spun in a circle "Where am I?"

"Your thoughts at the moment... this is everything that goes through your head _right now_" The Doctors voice floated to her but slightly... _off_, like there was more than one of him and when she finally found him she had to blink to focus

"It wasn't like this before … why … do you look like that?" Rose asked warily as he blinked at her, before a familiar grin that she associated with jumpers and leather coats floated across his face, and suddenly the clouds they were standing on was flooded with images of her first Doctor before they all faded away leaving her feeling slightly dizzy, but the Doctor either couldn't see them or ignored them

"Sorry, that's all my regenerations present in a single image, give me a moment" Even as he spoke, the blur was beginning to solidify and before she could blink twice it was just the Doctor, only one of him, standing there with soft brown eyes and a pinstripe suit.

"It wasn't like this last time..." Rose muttered again, pausing when the Doctor took her hand

"No, I didn't bring you in with me last time, I probably would have found the source of the time-lines faster if I had … but I wasn't exactly in the best shape mentally myself" he admitted, before abruptly changing the subject "So, this is right here and now... and we're looking for your memories from the meta-... John..."

They were suddenly surrounded by gunfire and a wave of pain and fear made the image of the Doctor in her mind stagger a bit before Rose managed to bury the memory of Johns death just below her surface memories again

"Sorry..." she whispered, but the Doctor merely shook his head

"It's normal for certain things to trigger memories" he told her gently before holding out the hand he'd dropped away at the wash of her memories, ready for her to take again.

Together they began walking through the endless plain of white clouds that made up her mental landscape and as they wandered past, small windows began appearing with snippets of her past playing inside them like T.V screens, and then open doorways with full memories that could be walked through and re-experienced.

Then Rose realised that they weren't moving at all but that it was the snippet-windows and the doorway-memories that were shifting positions around them like a kaleidoscope.

Except one.

To the right of the Doctor.

Rose frowned at the static doorway and stared, but it was silent, no remembered laughter or favourite tune could be found on the other side, only a dark shadow sparsely interspersed with star like glints of light reminding Rose of where their bodies were physically

"I don't ... that door, where...?"

"That's the connection between my mind and yours" The Doctor told her softly, knowing exactly what she was trying to say and wishing she hadn't asked, because he knew Rose, and he knew what her next question as going to be.

"Can I go through, Doctor?"

His eyes caught hers but he didn't reply immediately "theoretically, yes ... But ... not ... not this time..."

She tried to smother her disappointment but only partially succeeded, blocking out the Doctor as he began rambling once again and her eyes were drawn back to the shadows behind that memory-door that wasn't a memory, it intrigued her. There was darkness there and a coolness but it was refreshing to her rather and terrifying or chilling, and those pinpricks of lights ... but her attention was caught by the Doctors voice stumbling over John's name once again

" ...looking for the moment the met-John shared his memories, so we need to find where you've stored your memories of him"

As he spoke the memory-doors began shifting and Rose blinked, dizzy as the clouds they were standing on changed to a soft blue carpet and the flat that she'd shared with John appeared around them.

The Doctors face took on a calm expression but his eyes glowed with something Rose couldn't place.

"Our flat … this is- was … our flat..."

"Somewhere in here is the memory of what happened and we need to find it, weelll, you need to find it, your mind after all"

"How am I supposed to find anything when I can't even work out how we got here?" Rose snapped unintentionally, but the Doctor ignored her tone and merely brushed away her concerns with a bright

"Course you can!... sort of like a paradox otherwise, we're inside your mind so if you can't work out how we got here, then we can't actually be here can we?" he smiled softly with a slight edge of smugness , and looked familiar to her once again "but we are here, so you do understand... this is all made easier because somehow your mind has already organised your thoughts and memories, at least some of them, into designated area's like the-John in this flat and the alien things in the Tardis-"

Rose couldn't stop a giggle escaping and the Doctor blinked "That's not 'alien things' Doctor," Rose explained with a grin "That's just memories to do with you!"

He was briefly aware that he was gaping like a fish (earth fish anyway) out of water before his mouth caught up with his thoughts

"How do you know?"

Rose frowned and sat on the arm of her old blue sofa "Because I've always associated thing I want to remember with a particularly memorable place … like-"

"No! Don't! We need to be _here_, remember? But that's brilliant" the Doctor was beaming, and it drew a grin from Rose as he continued babbling away "That's _more_ than brilliant! Do you know how rare it is for humans to think like that? Of course you don't, no, why would you? But let's get you focussing shall we? Where did John share his memories?"

Rose took a moment to absorb his babbled speech as she glanced around the flat with a sigh, her grin fading

"It was in the kitchen, but it won't be there..."

The Doctor waited for her to continue but Rose just shook her head absently and stood from the sofa "Come on..."

She moved around the memory in a way that betrayed her familiarity with this place, soft smiles that she didn't notice giving were aimed at pictures, fingertips were trailed along the back of the sofa and edges of furniture and a relaxed lean against a door frame were all signs of a life the Doctor had missed sharing with her.

They reached the end of the short hallway and Rose opened a door into-oh...!

The bedroom.

Roses' bedroom.

The one she shared with...

The Doctor swallowed and glanced at her to find her watching him with a wary expression on her soft features "Coming? It's only a memory right?"

He didn't move for a moment, hands shoved into the pockets of his long coat defensively "Why's it in here? This might stir up memories you'd rather not-"

"Doctor..." His nervous chatter stopped as she raised an eyebrow at him "It's in here because the kitchen was laughter and fun … this room I associate with things that are special … like my last birthday, or John letting me see his memories without barriers or boundaries"

He nodded and stepped across the threshold, and could immediately feel the change in the thoughts stored there. It felt like walking into the ancient temple of Sybille the prophet, or being present at the birth of Jesus or standing as the witness at a Time Lord's naming, or some other awe worthy event.

He could feel how dearly Rose held the memories stored in this room, and yet for them to be here surely they only related to events from her three years in the parallel world? Could Rose have gained so many cherished memories in three years to fill a room with this much reverence?

"So, uh, need to find the right memory"

Rose was watching him and he met her gaze, hiding the strange awkwardness he felt in this part of her mind, but she didn't question him on it and merely opened a book on one of the bedside tables, releasing a memory that surrounded them like the flat had.

The Doctor froze in place at the scene before him and shot Rose a look, the darker side of himself that was still only just beneath the surface wondered if she'd done this on purpose, chosen the wrong memory and his teeth gritted together as he watched the memory-Rose and memory-John entwine closely on the kitchen floor. When he saw the pain on her face he knew this hadn't been any harsh action on her part, and feeling the self disgust rising in his throat he was glad she hadn't seen the fury on his face before it had receded once more.

"When does he-" The Doctors question was answered when memory-Rose gasped and tensed and the kitchen faded around them in a myriad of thoughts and images rushing past them. Rose had known this was a bad idea as soon as the Doctor froze in the doorway of her bedroom ... the memory of it? She'd seen the tenseness enter his frame and it hadn't really left yet, but what had hadn't banked on was the solid stream of information she's received from John to _hurt_.

And it did hurt. She flinched at the first barrage of information, and slammed her eyes shut as though that would help, she could feel her arms wrap round her middle and finally managed to release the breath she'd been holding and gasp in pain. The Doctor had been transfixed by the information from the moment it had started floating around them, and although Rose couldn't see him with her eyes pressed shut against the agony flooding her she hoped he'd heard her gasp, because she honestly couldn't find it in herself to make another sound as she tried not to simply scream.

She thought he'd heard her...

He must have...

Then long fingers were wrapping round her arms and the pain stopped as suddenly as it had arrived and she let herself collapse against that familiar thin chest as she shivered. But she didn't collapse, more rolled into it.

Her whole body was trembling and she slowly realised that somehow the Doctor had gotten them both out of her mind. Which explained why her legs hadn't given out under her when she'd felt his grip on her arms, but not why he was letting her hide her face against his shoulder while he brushed gentle fingers through her hair while muttering apologies.

When she felt her voice was going to be relatively steady, Rose pulled her face back from his shoulder a bit and frowned at him, but the Doctor avoided her eyes

"What you sorry for?"

He didn't even hesitate, but he kept his warm brown eyes on the coat they were laying on, "reviewing that memory unlocked the information, it nearly overloaded your mind, I could have killed you..."

"But you didn't..." Rose sighed wearily and she almost cheered when she drew a puzzled frown out of him, causing his eyes to raise to her once more "You really need to stop apologising for 'almosts' and 'could have's' Doctor"

"But..."

"No buts! It could have but it didn't so there's nothing wrong right?" She met him glare for glare and the Doctor nearly smiled, but then remembered how Rose ... brilliant, wonderful, Rose had been shaking from the remnants of pain and the amusement died in his eyes

"Are you hurt?"

"I ache all over, but I've lived through worse" she shook her head carefully flopped back on his coat again "just don't ask me to move for a while" she added, poking her tongue out playfully and grinning at the soft chuckle that escaped him as he mirrored her position, linking their hands together as they returned to gazing at the stars while they let Rose's bruised body and mind recover

**

* * *

**

"Did you find out?"

Rose guessed they'd been laying in relaxed silence with their hands linked together staring at the star field around them for at least half an hour, probably closer to an hour, and she'd finally remembered the reason they'd gone tramping through her mind anyway.

"Hmm?" was her response as the Doctor rolled his head to stare at her blankly "oh! Yes! It's rather intriguing really... You didn't get very much 'information' so to speak, you didn't exactly stay in his thoughts for very long, but what I think I can deduce from that is that it really has nothing to do with whatever you gleaned from John's mind" He beamed at her but nothing flickered on Roses features and the Doctor eventually frowned

"Welll?"

"Well what? You haven't told me anything yet!" Rose laughed softly at him pout but he obliged and continued

"It's just you ... everything you managed to work out was merely reached via logic, the fission blast? You probably had tid-bits of information about the actual technology and your mind worked out the power up speeds for itself, and you already knew all the Earth facts needed to determine the 20 minutes deadline!"

Rose blinked and frowned "So you're saying it's just me and ... the changes ...?"

"Exactly!" he announced cheerfully, "Isn't it brilliant?"

"I ... suppose, just one more thing to adjust to..." Rose was frowning and the Doctors grin faded in response

"You all right?"

"I will be" she reassured softly, although her response wasn't particularly reassuring

"It feels like that after every regeneration" he whispered so softly Rose almost didn't catch it "You're not quite sure what to expect coming out of your mouth, what thought is going to pass through your head next and you don't recognise yourself in a mirror, and then you realise you don't know if your companions will accept it, if they'll still be there, if you'll start of the mornings with blazing rows instead of quiets coffee's..."

His voice was a strange tight quality to it and silence reigned for a heartbeat or four

"Prisoner Zero... What it said about ... promises being broken, about Amy waiting ... why did that get to you like that Doctor? I've never seen you doubt yourself..."

"Because it was right" he snapped, but Rose could tell he wasn't really angry, he just didn't want to have this conversation

"Because I always do it, leave people behind ... Amy, I left Jack of satellite 5, I left Sarah-Jane, and I left ... I left you Rose, on that stupid beach..."

Their silence returned. Rose knew the Doctor had sunk into his thoughts and didn't try to pry him out of them for now; she was deep in her own thoughts.

At length she sighed and warm brown eyes turned to study her face with a frown

"You did it again you know" she whispered, turning to face him as he frowned "We left Amy and Rory on that rooftop without thinking, just ran for the Tardis, just like always ... we left her behind a second time after promising her she could come with us"

Rose watched him close his eyes before dropping her plan hesitantly "I think we should go back for her"

His eyes snapped open and he frowned "What! Why?"

"Because we promised, because she's got a spark of something special, because she's so very human and because she waited, twelve years she waited! Isn't that reason enough?"

She started at him and he stared at her, but it was Rose who backed down first "At least one trip, you can decide what to do after that, but don't you thin she deserves one trip?"

His determination crumbled in the face of this simple blonde woman's pleading and he groaned, defeated as she batted dark lashes over green eyes, certain it hadn't been intentional but never the less the technique had succeeded

"Ooooohhh! All right then! But only for one trip!..." Rose laughed, sitting up with a grin which the Doctor interrupted with a quick, loud "AND!... I have one condition..."

"What's that then?" Rose asked softly, and if a hint of wariness tinged her tone of voice, it was sufficiently covered by excitement

"We go somewhere else first, just us, an adventure for old times sake..."

How could she say no to that?

"Doctor... you've got yourself a deal!" She beamed at him and he sighed, helping her stand and pulling his coat up from the glistening ground.

He didn't want to go back for the red head, when it came right down to it she was irritating, but ... It made Rose grin, so he'd put up with the lying and the irritating questions.

He had Rose back. Things weren't right yet, thing's weren't going to be perfect for a long time.

But he could hope. Yes, hope he could certainly manage.

**

* * *

**

**Song Listened To: I See You – Leona Lewis**

**Song Listened To: Waking Up In Vegas – Katy Perry**

**Song Listened To: That's The Way I Loved You – Taylor Swift**

**Song Listened To: Dance of Love – Michael Flatley's Feet of Flames Soundtrack**


	10. AUTHOR UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENT

**Authors Note**

This is NOT a chapter. This is an Update Notification.

As of May 28th 2012, the continuation and publication of this fan-fiction is scheduled to be posted (approximately) during October/November 2012.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

**Dyran Hunter**


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